h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Simulacron3!

I've subedited your fantastic entry on the Laetoli footprints!

I'm going to return it to the editors in the next few days so it can move on to the next stage of becoming part of the Edited Guide. If you'd like to check it for any mistakes before I send it (at which point, any mistakes in it become less easy to change) then the entry's at A944336.

My most significant change was to remove the link to becominghuman.org because it didn't specifically describe the Lucy skeleton and the documentary claimed to be only viewable with a broadband connection (which not eveybody has). If you'd like me to add a different link, please post it here.

If you find have any comments, find any mistakes or have anything that you'd like me to change, please also post them!

I hope you like my changes
RhoMuNuQ

Hi!
Thanks for your effort on this entry. You've made a few changes we should discuss, but I don't have time to describe them now. I'll try to point them out in the next day or so.

OK ... the sooner the better!

RhoMuNuQ

I've returned the entry!

If there are any changes that you'd like the editors to consider, I'll pass them on if you post them here.

RhoMuNuQ

Please restore the first paragraph to its original form. Your changes have left three sentence fragments and destroyed the parallelism of 'imagine' in the first two paragraphs.

In the last sentence of the second paragraph, reinsert 'indeed' (or perhaps 'actually' instead) to keep the intended emphasis for the assertion of what may be a counterintuitive fact.

Please change the second sentence in the 1st paragraph under Discovery to read "While we tend to think that major scientific discoveries are made in laboratories by dull, plodding scientists with narrowly-focused eyes and minds, the Laetoli discovery happened far differently." You had reversed the order of "eyes and minds" and left out the comma needed to separate the main and subordinate clauses.

The first sentence under Formation is better as it was originally. I'm afraid you've made it choppy and stiff. In the second sentence, too, I think you've added words without adding significant clarity to the meaning. In the last sentence, please change 'leaving' to 'preserving'

Under Significance, 'earliest found' should be restored to 'earliest known'.

At the end of the last sentence just before Controversy: 'quite possible to say' is not an accurate expression; please change the last port of the sentence to read 'fairly certain that the footprints are between three and four million years old.'

third to half of search results --> third to half of Web search results

The sentence beginning with "Despite admitting .. " is incorrect in meaning. Please change it to read as "Although scientists admit to being very surprised that such an early hominid should resemble modern humans so closely in stride and standing posture, they do not accept the idea that these footprints were made by human."

In the sentence that begins with "Although creationists ..." please delete 'would' from 'paleontologists would admit'

I like my original ending sentence better. However, if you won't restore it, at least correct the edited sentence to read as "They looked very different to modern humans, having ape-like heads with no chin, no forehead and a protruding jaw."

Aside from those points, you've made some very nice improvements. Thanks!

I'll ask for those changes to be made!

RhoMuNuQ

... they've been made!

RhoMuNuQ