A reappraisal of early hominid phylogeny

Strait, David S.; Grine, Frederick E.; Moniz, Marc A.

doi:10.1006/jhev.1996.0097

Cited by 286 publications

(237 citation statements)

References 113 publications

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“…There also does not appear to be strong habitat preference for the genus, with reconstructions of mosaic habitats for most of the Australopithecus sites (99,101,102), although it is unclear how the hominins were using the landscape. With six species currently referred to Australopithecus, even though this genus is considered as paraphyletic by some researchers (58,67,113), it would appear that it is relatively speciose. However, it is difficult to assess how long-lived each of these species might have been, or how many of them overlapped in time and space, and therefore difficult to make sound arguments about sympatry and niche partitioning among these species.…”

Section: Pliocene Hominin Diversity Sympatry and The Question Of Nimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

Haile‐Selassie

Melillo

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Recent discoveries of multiple middle Pliocene hominins have raised the possibility that early hominins were as speciose as later hominins. However, debates continue to arise around the validity of most of these new taxa, largely based on poor preservation of holotype specimens, small sample size, or the lack of evidence for ecological diversity. A closer look at the currently available fossil evidence from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Chad indicate that Australopithecus afarensis was not the only hominin species during the middle Pliocene, and that there were other species clearly distinguishable from it by their locomotor adaptation and diet. Although there is no doubt that the presence of multiple species during the middle Pliocene opens new windows into our evolutionary past, it also complicates our understanding of early hominin taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships.If one looks back over the controversies of human evolution, they have one element in common: new discoveries, theories, methods came along which no one in the controversy anticipated. The "facts" changed, and consequently people were not right or wrong in any simple way.S. L. Washburn and R. L. Ciochon, 1974 (1) New fossil discoveries and analytical methods that have proliferated during the last few decades have fundamentally changed how we study and interpret hominin fossils and understand human evolution. The discovery and subsequent naming of Australopithecus afarensis in the late 1970s was one of the major milestones in paleoanthropology (2). Its discovery not only pushed the record of hominins to earlier than 3 million years ago (Ma) (2), but also demonstrated the antiquity of human-like bipedality (3). However, the taxonomic homogeneity of the Au. afarensis hypodigm has been questioned since its naming (4-7), even though the Hadar fossil sample appears to be no more variable than other living ape species (8-11). A consensus emerged during the 1980s in which Au. afarensis, dated to between 3.7 and 2.9 Ma, was considered to be the sole early hominin species older than 3 Ma, largely supported by the lack of fossil evidence to indicate otherwise.When Australopithecus bahrelghazali was named in 1995 based on an approximately 3.5-Ma partial mandible from Chad (12), it was quickly dismissed as a geographic variant of Au. afarensis (13-15). The initial descriptions of Ardipithecus ramidus (16) and Australopithecus anamensis (17), followed by the naming of even earlier hominin species, such as Orrorin tugenensis (18), Ardipithecus kadabba (19,20), and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (21), extended the antiquity of our lineage as far back as >6 Ma. These early hominins initially appeared to show no temporal or spatial overlap, and hence reinforced the idea that the early phases of hominin evolution were characterized by phenetic continuity and phyletic gradualism, with only one hominin species existing in a region at any given time >3 Ma (e.g., ref. 22; see discussions below).The discovery of the Burtele partial foot from Ethiopia (23), the naming of Kenyan...

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Section: Pliocene Hominin Diversity Sympatry and The Question Of Nimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

Haile‐Selassie

Melillo

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Cladistic analyses rely on the fundamental principle that the traits analyzed are independent (12)(13)(14)(15)(16). In human paleontology, this principle is routinely violated as functionally and developmentally linked traits are subdivided for analytical purposes.…”

Section: Presumption 1: Anatomical Traits Are Independentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some hominid taxa have absolutely and relatively thicker molar enamel than others (86,87). Over the last 20 years, especially with the advent of cladistics, this continuously varying trait has often been categorized discretely (16,88). Early hominids with ''thick'' enamel are often identified as direct human ancestors, whereas early hominids with ''thin'' enamel are interpreted as more closely related to the thin-enameled extant African apes (89).…”

Section: Presumption 3: Small-scale Morphological Change Is Almost Almentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating the genotype and phenotype in hominid paleontology

Hlusko

2004

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Competing interpretations of human origins and evolution have recently proliferated despite the accelerated pace of fossil discovery. These controversies parallel those involving other vertebrate families and result from the difficulty of studying evolution among closely related species. Recent advances in developmental and quantitative genetics show that some conventions routinely used by hominid and other mammalian paleontologists are unwarranted. These same advances provide ways to integrate knowledge of the genotype into the study of the phenotype. The result is an approach that promises to yield a fuller understanding of evolution below the family level.

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“…If we take it that the existence of autapomorphic features for Homo erectus is unproven (Stringer, 1984;Hublin, 1986;Kennedy, 1991;Brauer and Mbua, 1992), each feature has to be taken into account, with no reason to exclude it a priori. Thus, the existence of a preglenoidal tubercle, which is common to Indonesian Homo erectus and to the KNMER 3883 specimen, which was considered as one of the first African Homo erectus (Rightmire, 1990, Wood, 1991 most commonly accepted as Homo ergaster (Groves, 1989;Wood, 1994;Strait et al, 1997), suggests regional differences in the frequency of traits within Homo erectus sensu lato but no clear-cut eastwest differences. At that step of the survey on the significance of the preglenoid tubercle, its absence in Pongo, Gorilla, Pan, and Australopithecine supposes that this could be a derived state in these Homo erectus sensu lato.…”

Section: Potential Significancementioning

confidence: 99%