Ramapithecus

Ramapithecus of the genus Sivapithecus is an extinct creature. In 1932 G. Edward Lewis found fragments of an upper jaw and some teeth in Siwalik Hills in northern India and labeled them as Ramapithecus. For some time during the 1960 and 70's this was thought by evolution-embracing scientists as the first direct ancestor of modern humans. Now evolutionists say that any one species in the Sivapithecus genus may have been the ancestor to the modern orangutans.

Ramapithecus Quotes
Duane Gish noted within the pages of, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, 1986, p140 and it says: David Pilbeam, formerly of Yale and now at Harvard University, Elwyn Simons, now of Duke University, two of the leading paleoanthropologists in the U.S., and others had in recent years strongly championed Ramapithecus as an early hominid, a creature in the direct line leading to man. (Simons E. L., Ann. N. Y. Acad. of Sci, 1969, 167:319; Simons E. L., Sci. Amer, 1964,. 211(1):50; Pilbeam D. R., Nature, 1968, 219:1335; Simons E. L. & Pilbeam D. R., Science, 1971, 173:23). During that time it was frequently stated in the anthropological literature and textbooks that there was general agreement that Ramapithecus and related fossils (referred to as ramapithecids) were ancestral to all true hominids, including Man. Today, in the light of additional material that has been discovered, most anthropologists have discarded Ramapithecus as a hominid. He is no longer considered to have been a creature in the line leading to man.

"APE MAN" OUT, ROGER LEWIN, Ed., Research News, Science, "The dethroning of Ramapithecus from putative first human in 1961 to extinct relative of the orangutan in 1982 is one of the most fascinating, and bitter, sagas in the search for human origins." BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.86

Robert B. Eckhardt from Penn. State University wrote in, "APES" in Scientific American, Vol.226, p.101 that, ...there would appear to be little evidence to suggest that several different hominoid species are represented among the Old World dryopithecine fossils... (Ramapithecus, Oreopithecus, Limnopithecus, Kenyapithecus). They themselves nevertheless seem to have been apes morphologically, ecologically, and behaviorally.

Related References

 * Ramapithecus Wikipedia