Paranthropus Not a Missing Link

Paranthropus (formerly Zinjanthropus)
is no longer considered a missing link.
It was an extinct ape.

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

In my December 4, 2024 post, I reported on an anthropological finding that undermines one step of ‘The March of Progress’ which pictures what Darwinists believe was “the evolutionary transformation of monkey into man.”[1] My review was based on the November 2024 Science report that found tracks of a modern human together with tracks of Paranthropus boisei.[2]

Introduction to Paranthropus

When Paranthropus boisei was first discovered, National Geographic Magazine, which funded the fieldwork that led to its discovery, touted it as “one of our early ancestors.” The discoverers, Mary and Louis Leakey, “presented the new fossil, [they] named Zinjanthropus, as one of our ancestors.”[3]

One problem the evolutionists faced was determining if “a sufficiently long time interval elapsed between the Lower Pleistocene and the closing stages of the Middle Pleistocene to allow for the transformation, by evolution, from Zinjanthropus to something approaching Homo.” The answer would normally be “No”, but “Leakey appealed to domestication to provide a model by which evolution could proceed” far more rapidly.[4]

By applying this dubious explanation, Leakey concluded that the “time interval of some 400,000 years is more than ample [time] for the evolution of a creature like Zinjanthropus, once he domesticated himself, into Homo …. In fact, once he had become the maker of stone tools, there is no reason at all why human evolution should not have been as rapid as that of his many subsequent domestic animals.”[5] Leakey had to be careful in making these assumptions because “He had already academically embarrassed himself twice by claiming to find human ancestors that were nothing more than recent burials.”[6]

Wishing for Ancestors

This problem was not unique to Leakey:

Once he had in mind that something was an ancestor [of humans], such as Zinj, he forcefully made the case that it was so, even if he had to abandon the very notion he had just popularized. Nor are such maneuvers entirely things of the past; paleoanthropology is still fraught with strong personalities that are constantly bickering over who has discovered our true ancestors.[7]

Problems soon appeared in the interpretation of what was formerly called Zinjanthropus, now called Paranthropus boisei. The new fossil evidence eventually forced the rejection of P. boisei as a direct link to humans. Instead, it supported the fact that it was merely an extinct type of primate.

The finding that Paranthropus boisei existed contemporaneously with modern man is one more example of the conclusion by many creationists that paleoanthropologists will eventually find that all of the claimed missing links are not part of a progression leading to humans. Rather, they are extinct animals that once lived with humans. Finding P. boisei and modern human footprints together supports the conclusion that Paranthropus boisei was an extinct ape. In contrast, the illustration printed in the Hatala et al. article shows both the external appearance of modern humans and Paranthropus boisei to be very similar as expected if P. boisei was a missing link.

The Discovery of Paranthropus boisei

Paranthropus boisei (Boise is the surname of one of Leakey’s financial supporters) was originally named Zinjanthropus (Zinj) by Louis Leakey. As more P. boisei fossils were uncovered, it was reclassified as an Australopithecus and then again reclassified as Paranthropus. The holotype specimen (the holotype is the first fossil type described by the finder) named OH 5, was discovered by paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Its main traits include a massive, buttressed skull, face, and mandible with large molars and premolars, and a compound sagittal-nuchal crest.

As more and more Zinj fossils were unearthed, paleoanthropologists were able to pin down many more details and found it looked less and less prehuman, and more and more like an extinct primate. Although most of the 200 specimens that have been found since Leakey’s 1959 discovery are skull fragments, many of the traits of its type can now be stated with reasonable certainty.[8] Unfortunately, “as yet, there is no sign of a well-authenticated P. boisei skeleton.”[9]

Traits of Paranthropus

The herbivorous Paranthropus boisei had a megadontia quotient of 2.7, meaning that their teeth were 2.7 times larger than expected of an animal of its size and shape. P. boisei individuals had the largest ridge on the frontal bone above the eye socket (called a supraorbital torus) of any known primate. They also had a comparatively large cranial capacity of 514 cc. As is true of all australopithecines, they were sexually dimorphic. Males were 4’6″ (137 cm) tall and 108 lb. (49 kg) with more pronounced sagittal-nuchal crests than females. Females were 4’1″ (124 cm) and 70 lb. (34 kg).

Claims made by evolutionists about P. boisei include its age, which has been estimated from 0.5 million to 1.75 million years. A major problem with these age estimates is that its fossils were found predominantly in what were wet, wooded environments, such as wetlands along lakes and rivers, and wooded or arid shrublands. This is a major concern because these environments do not favor good preservation.

Leakey and other evolutionists very much wanted to find a missing link to document evolution, but the morphological traits, as described above, forced paleoanthropologists to eventually conclude that Zinj was not a pre-human, but a primate with many gorilla features. As a result, most paleoanthropologists now agree that Zinj belongs to one of the many side branches of human evolution that did not lead to H. sapiens. The problem is, since all of the fossil ancestor candidates in the progression have not been documented as ancestral to humans, in essence, our assumed evolutionary ancestors are largely unknown. New discoveries show that the morphology of fossil apes varied much more than once believed.

Summary

The creatures humans allegedly evolved from are still largely unknown. In the words of Dr. Sergio Almécija (of the American Museum of Natural History) et al.,

Ever since the writings of Darwin and Huxley, humans’ place in nature relative to apes (nonhuman hominoids) and the geographic origins of the human lineage (hominins) have been heavily debated… it is likely that the last shared ape ancestor [with humans] had its own set of traits, different from those of modern humans and modern apes, both of which have been undergoing separate suites of selection pressures.[10]

For this and other reasons,

There is no consensus on the phylogenetic positions of the diverse and widely distributed Miocene apes. Besides their fragmentary record, disagreements are due to the complexity of interpreting fossil morphologies that present mosaics of primitive and derived features, likely because of parallel evolution (i.e., homoplasy). This has led some authors to exclude known Miocene apes from the modern hominoid radiation. However, most researchers identify some fossil apes as either stem or crown members of the hominid clade [i.e., preceding the divergence between orangutans (pongines) and African great apes and humans (hominines), or as a part of the modern great ape radiation].[11]

In other words, it is not known where, or from what primate, humans descended from, consequently there is much disagreement even on basic details. One example of the disagreement is:

European Miocene apes have prominently figured in discussions about the geographic origin of hominines. “Kenyapith” apes dispersed from Africa into Eurasia ~16 to 14 Ma, and some of them likely gave rise to the European “dryopith” apes and the Asian pongines before 12.5 Ma. Some authors interpret dryopiths as stem hominines and support their back-to-Africa dispersal in the latest Miocene, subsequently evolving into modern African apes and hominins. Others interpret dryopiths as broadly ancestral to hominids or an evolutionary dead end.[12]

Conclusion

The evidence is that Zinj was not a pre-human but an extinct primate with many gorilla features. Its evolution from  Zinjanthropus to Paranthropus boisei illustrates that evolutionists not uncommonly bend the facts of the evidence to fit their evolutionary narrative.[13] The example of Paranthropus boisei is one more case that illustrates that most, or all, of our claimed supposed evolutionary ancestors are simply extinct types of primates. This finding supports the conclusion that none of the fossils represent missing links, but rather extinct primates that lived contemporaneously with humans.

References

[1] Arney, K., The mythical ‘March of Progress’, The Genetics Society Podcast, https://geneticsunzipped.com/transcripts/2020/1/2/the-mythical-march-of-progress, 2 January 2020.

[2] Hatala, K.G., et al., Footprint evidence for locomotor diversity and shared habitats among early Pleistocene hominins, Science 386(6725):1004-1010, 29 November 2024.

[3] Black, R., The species that domesticated itself, National Geographic, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-species-that-domesticated-itself, 1 December 2009.

[4] Black, 2009.

[5] Black, 2009.

[6] Black, 2009; emphasis added.

[7] Black, 2009.

[8] Wood, B., and P. Constantino, Paranthropus boisei: Fifty years of evidence and analysis, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 50:106-132, 2007.

[9] Wood and Constantino, 2007.

[10]Almécija, S., et al., Fossil apes and human evolution, Science 372(6542):eabb4363,

DOI: 10.1126/science.abb4363, 7 May 2021.

[11] Almécija, et al., 2021

[12] Almécija, et al., 2021; emphasis added.

[13] Coppedge, D., Evolution bends to fit the evidence, https://crev.info/2011/05/evolution_bends_to_fit_the_evidence/, 2 May 2011.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.