"But, the bigger problem is-unless you're a scientist-you've likely never have heard about it outside of this column"

Actually, they are a quick google search away. And as you can see, they are on "evolution" sources.

10.5 MYO "Gorilla"

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070824121653.65mgd37f&show_article=1
http://www.physorg.com/news107011927.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/317/5841/1016a
http://genomicron.blogspot.com/2007/08/press-going-ape-again.html
http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=27&idC..972
http://www.biotechnews.com.au/index.php/id;1353041073

Habilis/erectus chronological overlap

http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/hominid_journey/timeline.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/08/africa/evolve.php
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_habilis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

"The traditional theory is that man evolved from chimps about 6 MYA... gorillas evolved from orangutans about 14 MYA.”

This is not only a mischaracterization of Evolution, it is completely untrue. These apes share common ancestry—they didn’t “evolve from” one another. Based on this faulty premise, the author then proceeds with some puzzling logic.

This new finding at best pushes the gorilla/non-gorilla split further back by about 2-4 MY. It doesn’t necessarily change the Chimpanzee-Human split, as this wouldn’t happen until AFTER. The author is misusing the notion of a “human-ape split,” and the reader is left to assume that this means the split between humans and chimpanzees. What this is in fact referring to is the first ape-human split (meaning the point when Orangutans would split off of the line that leads to humans, at this point, this still includes the line that will lead to gorillas and chimpanzees).

It may be possible that they too simply share a common ancestor. There may be more hominid fossils not yet found. Perhaps more and more “Habilis” fossils will be found to the point where Habilis itself is split into subgroups the way Erectus has been. We may find that Habilis goes further back, to 3MYA at which point we don’t really call it Habilis but something else (similar to the overlap Ergaster and early Erectus). As time moves forward, Anthropologists will uncover more hominids and existing lines become split into smaller taxons, and we may find completely new hominids that do an even better job of filling these gaps. Whatever the case may be, Habilis, with its cranial capacity from 550cc-800cc (depending on which specimens we refer to) shows up in the fossil record almost 1 million years before early Erectus, with its 900cc (1100cc for later Erectus fossils) and more advanced tools.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/hominid_journey/timeline.html

Erectus and Habilis do indeed overlap. The idea put forth by the author of the article assumes that every member of Habilis must have somehow, uniformly evolved into the Erectus line. This is not how speciation works. Speciation is generally the result of new niches being filled, often caused by ecological changes. This is really nothing more than a rehash of the “fish are still fish” argument that assumes that, if amphibians evolved from fish, then all fish must have evolved into amphibians (given the existence of lungfish and mudskippers, it’s not difficult to imagine how some fish would have found a ‘profitable’ niche on land, especially when they were the first vertebrates to inhabit such….but I digress). Long story short, there is nothing damaging about the overlap between Habilis and Erectus.