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From: evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall)
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: Evolution
Message-ID: <1437@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 14:30:46 EST
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.1437
Posted: Sun Mar  9 14:30:46 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Mar-86 00:28:19 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 30


  OK, let's try my yearly primate evolution lecture again.  Open:  curtain
up on the Paleocene and Eocene.  Scurrying little mammals seen.  Examine
teeth of said critters.  Find that teeth of early primates refect an
insectivorous diet more than any other (expect a bit of variety here such as
flowers, shoots, young leaves and sap).  If insects make you cringe remember
how most folks go gaga over lobster and shrimp.
 Oligocene:  We're moving on to creatures which seem to hybridize apes and 
monkeys (which was actually ancestor to the other has been up in the air since
Fayum fossils found).  Probably something of a mixed diet here (omnivorous).
Fruits important (do you have a sweet tooth?  most apes do) with proteins and
other nutrients largely supplied by insects, young shoots, young leaves, 
flower pollen, etc.  Your spatulate shape retained by your incisors reflects
the importance of frugivory (fruits).
 Miocene:  Incisors even more reflective of frugivory.
 Pliocene:  Let's add broad, grinding molars, flattening face, some form of
padding on the rear, and sexual signals carried on the chest.  Bingo, we,ve
got the Theropithecus complex, named for a monkey which depends mostly on
grains (as we do; we,re largely gramnivorous omnivores).  Hense, those
wonderful pasta cravings.  Was meat eatten?  Probably some (it is an easy 
protein source).
 Pliestocene.  No reason to differ it from now except that Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis seems to have eatten more meat than we do, probably for the
same reasons that Eskimoes eat more than other peoples.  Most "primitive"?
peoples eat less than 25% of their protein in meat form.
  Bipedalism from hunting?  Garbage ... the concept was recognized as 
idiotic 30 years ago.  Why bipedalism?  Who knows, but that's what is fun
about it.

                                Sukie Crandall