Ramapithecus

David Pilbeam, formerly at Yale and now at Harvard University, Elwyn Simons, now at Duke University, two leading paleoanthropologists in the U.S., along with some others, have in recent years firmly favored Ramapithecus as an early hominid, a creature that directly leads to humans.1,10,14-16 Since then, agreements have occasionally been confirmed in anthropological literature and textbooks, stating that Ramapithecus and related fossils (designated as ramapithecids) represent the ancestors of all true hominids, including humans. Today, in light of the material that has been discovered, many anthropologists have rejected Ramapithecus as a hominid. It is no longer considered a creature that led to humans.

The fossil material named the species Ramapithecus was discovered in 1932 by G.E. Lewis, a graduate student at Yale, in the Siwalik Hills of northwestern India. In fact, several other fragments were discovered in 1915 and later added to Ramapithecus. Other fossilized parts of this creature have also been found in Kenya, the Swabian Alps in Europe, and in Yunnan Province in China, meaning it spanned a wide area, as fossils were found at sites 3,000 km apart. It was mainly the work and publications of Simons and Pilbeam in the 1960s that placed Ramapithecus on the human family tree. References to these views did not appear for long.

Dr. Robert Eckhardt, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University, was one of the first to criticize the status of Ramapithecus as a hominid. An article published in 1972.17 was underscored by the claim:

“Among the confused multitude of early fossil hominoids, is there any that is morphologically marked as a human hominoid ancestor? If the factor of genetic variability is determined, the answer that emerges is no.”

In other words, referring to Eckhardt, nowhere among the fossils of apes or ape-like creatures has a fact been found that would confirm a true human ancestor. As noted, Simons, Pilbeam, and others identified Ramapithecus as a hominid, and this decision was made based on a few teeth and several jaw fragments. Eckhardt conducted twenty-four different measurements on a collection of fossil teeth belonging to two species of Dryopithecus (fossil apes) and one species of Ramapithecus (a presumed fossil hominid) and compared the degree of variation found in these fossil species with similar measurements taken on chimpanzees in a research center and on a sample of wild chimpanzees from Liberia.

The degree of variation in the chimpanzee population was greater than that of the fossil samples in fourteen out of twenty-four measurements, the same in one, and smaller in nine measurements. Even in the minority of cases where the degree of variation in fossil samples exceeded that of living chimpanzees, the differences were very small. Thus, in tooth measurements, there were greater variations among living chimpanzees or within individual groups of apes than there were between Dryopithecus, a fossil ape, and Ramapithecus, which was presumed to be a hominid. Let us recall that Ramapithecus was designated as a hominid solely based on its dental characteristics!

Eckhardt extended his calculations to five more species of Dryopithecus and to Kenyapithecus, which, according to Simons and Pilbeam,14,18 is equivalent to Ramapithecus. Based on calculations of tooth size, there is little basis for classifying Dryopithecus into more than one species, as Eckhardt states:

“There is no compelling evidence for the existence of any particular hominid species during that interval unless the label ‘hominid’ denotes every single ape that has small teeth and a correspondingly small face.”

Eckhardt’s conclusion is that Ramapithecus appears to have been an ape—morphologically, ecologically, and behaviorally.

Walker and Andrews19 described the reconstruction of the dental arcade of Ramapithecus, based on a sample more complete than those previously studied. This reconstruction clarified that Ramapithecus did not have a parabolic dental arcade, as was previously assumed based on earlier reconstructions. The reconstruction showed that the dental arcades of the upper and lower jaws were very similar, if not identical, to what would be expected in apes.

More recent discoveries by Pilbeam20-22 and Alan Walker and Richard Leakey23 have definitively confirmed that Ramapithecus was a pongid, not a hominid. These discoveries included not only teeth and jaw fragments but also parts of the skull, face, and several vertebral bones.

In his book The Evolution of Man,24 published in 1970, Pilbeam warned:

“Locomotion, as well as body size, cannot be determined without some postcranial bones. It would not be wise to speculate on the locomotion of Ramapithecus based on knowledge of its teeth and jaw!”

Now, as he admitted in his 1984 article,22 he had believed that Ramapithecus walked on two legs solely based on jaw and tooth fragments, and he publicly proclaimed it. He has now revealed that this claim was based more on his subjective ideas than on actual data.

The fossils discovered by Pilbeam in Pakistan, and by Walker and Leakey in Kenya, were initially attributed to the genus Sivapithecus, whose fossils were first found in India in 1910. In any case, it is now known that Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus are similar enough that they could belong to the same genus or even the same species.20-22 One of Pilbeam’s discoveries dates back eight million years, while another dates back thirteen million years. Pilbeam reports that his newly discovered Sivapithecus fossils reveal unusual specific anatomical features of the face and skull identical to those of orangutans. Based on this evidence, Pilbeam stated that Ramapithecus (and Sivapithecus, of course) must be removed from the hominid classification.22

Walker and Leakey argue that their fossils of Sivapithecus, which they claim are seventeen million years old, reveal a great similarity to the modern orangutan.23 In fact, Walker says: “It is heretical to say so, but perhaps orangutans are living fossils.” In other words, Walker is trying to say that living orangutans are so similar to the fossils of Sivapithecus that the orangutan is a living embodiment of Sivapithecus. They cannot bring themselves to admit that Sivapithecus was an orangutan, of course, because that would be heresy.

Thus, Sivapithecus-Ramapithecus has turned into a creature resembling an orangutan, rather than a being that would later evolve into humans. After it was announced that Sivapithecus-Ramapithecus was not a hominid but was incredibly similar to modern orangutans, it is astonishing that Walker now claims that this creature was the ancestor of orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans!23 What is the basis for such a shocking claim? The basis for such a claim is that the fossils were found in Africa (where gorillas and orangutans supposedly originate) and the presumed age of the fossils (most evolutionists believe that the age of the presumed common ancestor of all apes and humans is at least seventeen million years or more). Thus, even though their fossils look just like orangutans, they were chosen as candidates for the ancestors of all apes and humans, simply because they are presumed to be old enough and were found in the right location. Let us recall that Mark Twain once observed that science is truly a fascinating phenomenon, because thanks to the irresponsible use of facts, incredible products of assumptions can be obtained! But, of course, newspapers around the world published the claim about a common ancestor, and a new myth was born.

As we will see later, Ramapithecus is just one of many in a series of creatures that were, from time to time, suggested to be the “missing link,” but for which, when more complete evidence was gathered, it turned out that they belonged to the ape family. The two creatures that preceded Ramapithecus in that series were Dryopithecus and Oreopithecus. Both were at one time considered hominids (Oreopithecus was, in fact, declared by various researchers to be an ape, a hominid, and even a pig!25), but they are now recognized as apes.20-22

As mentioned earlier, the supposed common ancestor of apes and humans has not yet been discovered. Many evolutionists believe that the common ancestor existed around twenty million years ago, or even earlier. The elimination of Sivapithecus-Ramapithecus as a possible human ancestor leaves the presumed evolutionary history of humans unfilled from the hypothetical separation of apes and humans to Australopithecus, dated from one to four million years on the evolutionary time scale.

• Literature
• E. L. Simons, Ann. N. Y. Acad. of Sci. 167:319 (1969).
• A. S. Romer, Vertebrate Paleontology, 3rd ed., The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1966, p. 218.
• A. J. Kelso, Physical Anthropology, 2nd ed., J. B. Lippincott, New York 1974, p. 142.
• C. B. G. Campbell, Science 153:436 (1966).
• R. D. Martin, Nat. Hist 91:26 (1982).
• Romer Ref. 3, p. 221.
• Kelso Ref. 3, p. 150.
• Kelso Ref. 3, p. 151.
• E. L. Simons, Ann. N. Y. Acad. of Sci. 102:293 (1962).
• E. L. Simons, Sci. Amer. 211(1):50 (1964).
• R. E. Benveniste and G. J. Todaro, Nature 261:161 (1976).
• J. H. Schwartz, Nature 308:501 (1984).
• Romer Ref. 2, p. 224.
• D. R. Pilbeam, Nature 219:1335 (1968).
• D. R. Pilbeam, Adv. of Sci. 24:368 (1968).
• E. L. Simons and D. R. Pilbeam, Science 173:23 (1971).
• R. B. Eckhardt, Sci. Amer., 226(1):94 (1972).
• E. L. Simons and D. R. Pilbeam, Folia Primatol. 3:81 (1965).
• A. L. Walker and P. Andrews, Nature 224:313 (1973).
• D. R. Pilbeam, Nature 295:232 (1982).
• W. Herbert, Science News 121:84 (1982).
• D. R. Pilbeam, Nat. Hist. 93:2 (1984).
• See B. Rensberger, Science 84 5(1):16 (1984).
• D. R. Pilbeam, The Evolution of Man, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, (1970).
• Pilbeam, Ref. 24, p. 99.