Creationist claim misleading

Alan Alexander’s letter of Feb. 7 cites a newspaper article that purportedly claims Donald Johanson, the discoverer of Lucy, admitted the fossil’s knee bone was located a mile away from the rest of the skeleton.

If Mr. Alexander had relied on reputable sources of scientific information, rather than the popular press, he would know that Johanson would not have admitted to any such thing. The knee bone in question was never claimed to have belonged to the Lucy specimen. Search for “CC003” on the Internet for clarification of this misleading creationist talking point.

To date, specimens of A. afarensis, the species to which Lucy belonged, have been collected from over 300 individuals. These fossils have provided representative examples of virtually every bone in the A. afarensis skeleton. One such specimen includes a 70 percent complete skull of an adult male.

The Lucy fossil is noteworthy because it was the first A. afarensis specimen to be discovered and because A. afarensis was one of our earliest evolutionary ancestors to walk upright on two feet.

If anyone is “monkeying with the evidence” as Mr. Alexander asserts, it is the cadre of creationists who persist in misrepresenting the facts about the fossil record.

Jack DeBaun

Sandpoint