Australopithecus

The first category, the genus Australopithecus, means "southern ape," as we have said. It is assumed that these creatures first appeared in Africa about 4 million years ago, and lived until 1 million years ago. There are a number of different species among the australopithecines. Evolutionists assume that the oldest Australopithecus species is A. afarensis. After that comes A. africanus, and then A. robustus, which has relatively bigger bones. As for A. Boisei, some researchers accept it as a different species, and others as a sub-species of A. Robustus.

All of the Australopithecus species are extinct apes that resemble the apes of today. Their cranial capacities are the same or smaller than the chimpanzees of our day. There are projecting parts in their hands and feet which they used to climb trees, just like today's chimpanzees, and their feet are built for grasping to hold onto branches. Many other characteristics-such as the details in their skulls, the closeness of their eyes, their sharp molar teeth, their mandibular structure, their long arms, and their short legs-constitute evidence that these creatures were no different from today's ape. However, evolutionists claim that, although australopithecines have the anatomy of apes, unlike apes, they walked upright like humans.

This claim that australopithecines walked upright is a view that has been held by paleoanthropologists such as Richard Leakey and Donald C. Johanson for decades. Yet many scientists who have carried out a great deal of research on the skeletal structures of australopithecines have proved the invalidity of that argument. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world-renowned anatomists from England and the USA, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, showed that these creatures did not walk upright in human manner. Having studied the bones of these fossils for a period of 15 years thanks to grants from the British government, Lord Zuckerman and his team of five specialists reached the conclusion that australopithecines were only an ordinary species of ape, and were definitely not bipedal, although Zuckerman is an evolutionist himself.186 Correspondingly, Charles E. Oxnard, who is another evolutionary anatomist famous for his research on the subject, also likened the skeletal structure of australopithecines to that of modern orangutans.187

That Australopithecus cannot be counted an ancestor of man has recently been accepted by evolutionist sources. The famous French popular scientific magazine Science et Vie made the subject the cover of its May 1999 issue. Under the headline "Adieu Lucy"-Lucy being the most important fossil example of the species Australopithecus afarensis-the magazine reported that apes of the speciesAustralopithecus would have to be removed from the human family tree. In this article, based on the discovery of another Australopithecus fossil known simply as St W573, the following sentences appear:

A new theory states that the genus Australopithecus is not the root of the human race… The results arrived at by the only woman authorized to examine St W573 are different from the normal theories regarding mankind's ancestors: this destroys the hominid family tree. Large primates, considered the ancestors of man, have been removed from the equation of this family tree… Australopithecus and Homo (human) species do not appear on the same branch. Man's direct ancestors are still waiting to be discovered.188

186 Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, Toplinger Publications, New York, 1970, pp. 75-94.

187 Charles E. Oxnard, "The Place of Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt," Nature, vol. 258, 4 December 1975, p. 389.
188 Isabelle Bourdial, "Adieu Lucy," Science et Vie, May 1999, no. 980, pp. 52-62. (emphasis added)