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" You don't just magically flip some evolutionary switch somewhere and transmute a quadruped into an upright-walking bipedal human. "
Donald Johanson
Just
Flip
Human
Related Quotes:
" What's changed is we now have good anatomical, geological, archaeological evidence that Neanderthals are not our ancestors. When I wrote 'Lucy,' I considered Neanderthals ancestors of modern humans. We have gone back twice the age of Lucy, six million years. And we see that upright bipedal walking goes back that far in time. "
Donald Johanson
Good
Walking
Age
" It's very hard for all of us, when we've committed ourselves to a particular interpretation, to change our minds. "
Donald Johanson
Minds
Interpretation
Hard
" In our case, finding a Lucy is unique. No one will ever find another Lucy. You can't order one from a biological supply house. It's a unique discovery, a unique specimen. "
Donald Johanson
House
You
Unique
" Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, 'What do you expect to find?' And my answer always is, 'The unexpected,' because we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg; we've just scratched the surface. "
Donald Johanson
Looking
Me
Go
" Normally, we are happy to find a fragment of jaw, a few isolated teeth, a bit of an arm, a bit of a skull. But to find associated body parts is extremely rare. "
Donald Johanson
Teeth
Find
Body
" One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it. "
Donald Johanson
Anything
Commitment
Successful
" One has to take initiative in life to achieve what he or she wants. "
Donald Johanson
Take
He
She
" The right question to ask from a Darwinian prospective is what was it about bipedalism that was so advantageous? Why did it lead to a - why did that adaptation ultimately lead to a species Homo sapiens that has come to dominate the planet today with six and a half billion people? "
Donald Johanson
Today
Ask
Right
" When we look for the origins of all humanity today, let's not just look at Europe, because I think Africa was the cradle, the crucible that created us as Homo sapiens. "
Donald Johanson
Today
Us
Think
" Commitment, belief and positive attitude are all important if you're going to be a success, whether you're in sports, in business or, as in my case, anthropology. "
Donald Johanson
Success
Positive
Business
" If you were to go to the National Museum in Addis Ababa, you would walk into a huge room filled with literally tens of tons of fossils, and most of them would be elephants and rhinos and hippopotamus and monkeys and giraffes and antelopes and so on. Hominids are very rare in the landscape, and it's very rare to find them. "
Donald Johanson
Go
Landscape
Museum
" We are placed in the genus of Homo, which is Latin for man - Homo sapiens: supposedly wise men. I sometimes think - wonder - whether we really are wise men. "
Donald Johanson
Men
Think
Wise
" I don't think we interbred with the Neanderthals at all. There are some people who think that there was some level of interbreeding. I think that we look so biologically different, that we looked and we acted so different, and we culturally were so different that we would not have had interbreeding between two species. "
Donald Johanson
Look
Two
Think
" All mammals undergo a certain degree of diversification. Darwin knew that. When he drew a family tree, it had many branches on it. "
Donald Johanson
Branches
Degree
Family
" I find a tremendous receptivity among the public for the subject matter of, 'Where did we come from and how did we get here?' People are thirsty and hungry for information on our origins. I feel a responsibility as a major figure in the area... to convey to the public the knowledge of human origins in a way that is understandable to them. "
Donald Johanson
Feel
Responsibility
People
" But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures. "
Donald Johanson
Me
Africa
Years
" When I realized, in 1978, that Lucy did represent a new species of human ancestor, and that I had an opportunity to name this new species, I realized this was a revolutionary step in understanding human origins. "
Donald Johanson
Opportunity
Understanding
Step
" I was very intellectually oriented, very early on. "
Donald Johanson
Very
Oriented
Intellectually
" My real father died when I was two years old, so I never knew him. He was a barber in Chicago. "
Donald Johanson
Two
Real
Never
" But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor. "
Donald Johanson
She
Three
Lab
" And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask. "
Donald Johanson
Fact
Questions
Problems
" Evolution is a fact. It is the best explanation of what is known from observations. It's a theory as powerful as the theory of gravity. "
Donald Johanson
Powerful
Evolution
Gravity
" Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong. "
Donald Johanson
Proven
Very
Wrong
" As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest. "
Donald Johanson
Number
Up
Experience
" Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton. "
Donald Johanson
Skeleton
Ancestors
Find
" Most achievers I know are people who have made a strong and deep dedication to pursuing a particular goal. That dedication took a tremendous amount of effort. "
Donald Johanson
Effort
Deep
Dedication
" I realized immediately that this was a terribly important discovery, but I didn't realize how important it would be until we had spent a lot of time in the laboratory studying it. "
Donald Johanson
Discovery
Important
Studying
" Regardless of what we look like on the outside, genetically, on the inside, everyone is an African. "
Donald Johanson
Everyone
Genetically
Look
" This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life's direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world's leading anthropologists. "
Donald Johanson
Direction
My Life
Me
" Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution. "
Donald Johanson
Art
Culture
Unique