Greg Laden puts an interesting twist on the question of how many hominin fossils we have: the question should be, “how did they die?”. We seem to have evolved from a species that was primarily a prey item on predators’ grocery list, to one that succumbed most often to disease, to one where mortality was driven by violence (and now, at least in our prosperous corner of the world, where senescence exacerbated by sloth and gluttony is the common cause of death.)
He’s right. The cool questions our students ought to be getting excited about have nothing to do with the nonsense the Discovery Institute wants them to discuss.