First your right about the 10k years thing. I misspoke, estimates are on the order of millions of years. But my point still stands at 10 million vs 1 billion. Anyways, all these dates are complete conjecture. Nobody really knows how old anything is, or what the effect of ice ages, meteors, etc. would be.
As for the rest of the interview, this guy is lying through his teeth when he says "Lucy had a brain just a bit larger than a chimp's" There is no possible way to get this from the bones. Here is a picture of what they found of "Lucy":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reconstruction_of_the_fos...
These guys just make stuff up, probably to get more fame and funding. I just found another link, turns out they found a baboon bone in the skeleton! The reason that the hip is so important is because it's the only thing that's really fully formed enough to say it looks human (note that lucy is about 3.5 feet tall, the size of a chimp).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27325-baboon-bone-fou...
As for Epidexipteryx, first, sure I will grant that it has something close to feathers, but it's still a weak argument, because they are in the wrong place! There must be a birdlike animal that has partially formed feathers on it's wings. Unfortunately, fossils are rarely preserved well, and it is difficult to tell what is actually happening. Combine that with scientists' desire for fame, and you get sketchy results like lucy
As for the rest of the interview, this guy is lying through his teeth when he says "Lucy had a brain just a bit larger than a chimp's" There is no possible way to get this from the bones. Here is a picture of what they found of "Lucy":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reconstruction_of_the_fos...
These guys just make stuff up, probably to get more fame and funding. I just found another link, turns out they found a baboon bone in the skeleton! The reason that the hip is so important is because it's the only thing that's really fully formed enough to say it looks human (note that lucy is about 3.5 feet tall, the size of a chimp).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27325-baboon-bone-fou...
As for Epidexipteryx, first, sure I will grant that it has something close to feathers, but it's still a weak argument, because they are in the wrong place! There must be a birdlike animal that has partially formed feathers on it's wings. Unfortunately, fossils are rarely preserved well, and it is difficult to tell what is actually happening. Combine that with scientists' desire for fame, and you get sketchy results like lucy