Australopithecines include two closely related genera referred to as Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Australopithecines are distinguished by their very ape-like skull (though the teeth are more human-like than chimpanzee-like), small brain size between 375 and 550cc, and knuckle-walking stance. The claim that australopithecines, like Lucy, walked upright was largely based on the appearance of her leg and hip bone (Gauger, 2012). However, australopithecines have long forearms and short hind legs. They also have curved fingers and long curved toes. Curved fingers and toes in extant primates are readily recognized as having no other purpose than full or part-time arboreal or tree-dwelling life. The article of Mark Collard and Leislie Aiello in Nature Magazine reports “good evidence from Lucy’s hand-bones that her species “knuckle-walked as chimps and gorillas still do today (Collard, 2000). It should also be noted that bipedal walking is common among living gorillas and some chimpanzees. However, this mode is not truly bipedal, and is more accurately referred to as knuckle-walking. Living nonhuman primates and australopithecines are probably analogous in this regard, and therefore, neither can be considered any closer to humans than the other.

Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis stated: The australopithecines known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage (Oxnard).

All this should make people wonder about the unusual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social

structures. Even facial features are happily and non-scientifically reconstructed. The ancestors of Australopithecines were created at the beginning of the six day around 5554 BCE, according to the Holy Scriptures (Genesis 1:1-31, LXX). Later around 3298 BCE, all of these apes were killed during the global flood except for the apes aboard Noah’s Ark (Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8 LXX). Lucy descended from the apes aboard Noah’s Ark that repopulated parts of Africa during the post flood era.

SOURCES: CHARLES E. OXNARD Dean, Grad. School, Prof. Bio. and Anat., USC American Biology Teacher. Gauger, Ann; Axe, Douglas; Luskin Casey (2012). Science & Human Origins. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-936599-04-2. Collard, Mark; Aiello, Leslie C. (March 23, 2000). “From Forelimbs to Two Legs”. Nature 404 (6776): 339-340. ISSN 0028-0836.