Back in the saddle and an eye-opening Answers mag

Happy new year, everybody!  I've been unplugged for the past three weeks, so my calendrical greeting is past its sell-by date, but what the hey.  I just love January.  My teaching semester is over, my creative juices are at their highest point in the year, I've got a giant research to-do list, and I'm refreshed from my holiday break.  And this year is extra special, since I didn't get burned up in the Mayan apocalypse!  How great is that?

I've got a number of articles I want to discuss over the next few weeks (catch-up again), but there was a real eye-opener in Answers magazine that I wanted to point out ASAP.  You might recall my brief foray into human baraminology, wherein I proposed that Australopithecus sediba (and Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis) was a human descendant of Adam and Eve.  That proposal was met with a lot of scorn, and rebuttals were quickly issued.  I'm kind of in the dog house with a lot of creationists over this, and that seems like a real pattern with me (heh).  You can read my past thoughts on the matter here.

When I opened Answers magazine and read this, I was kind of shocked:

...evidence, gathered on the east side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, confirms that an incomplete skull, discovered in 1972 and classified as Homo rudolfensis, does indeed represent another variety of human beings and not just a deformed individual.

That came from an unsigned item on page 12 titled "Putting a face on evolution."  When my paper came out, I'll grant that the main controversy over my paper was sediba, but David DeWitt also critiqued my proposal of rudolfensis as human.  Since the article is anonymous, I'm not sure what to make of it, but I know that nothing sneaks into that magazine by accident, so someone at AIG must think my proposal was confirmed.

That's a very interesting way to start the year.

Anonymous.  2013.  Putting a face on evolution.  Answers 8(1):12.

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com.