Morphological description and evolutionary significance of 300 ka hominin facial bones from Hualongdong, China

Wu, Xiujie; Pei, Soo‐Chang; Cai, Yanjun; Tong, Haowen; Xing, Song; Jashashvili, Tea; Carlson, Kristian J.; Liu, Wu

doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103052

Cited by 13 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Delson and Stringer (2) raise an interesting point about the recently published Hualongdong fossil from China because Wu et al (17) suggest that that fossil may represent an early ancestor of H. sapiens . This suggestion by Wu et al (17) leads Delson and Stringer (2) to argue that it “may well add further to the muddle.” What should be becoming increasingly clear is that a great deal of variability exists in the hominin fossil record of eastern Asia and the recently published Hualongdong fossil is just one example (9,10,17‐19). An increasing number of fossils from regions like China present a mosaic of features whose taxonomic/systematic position is still not clear.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…(2) to argue that it "may well add further to the muddle." What should be becoming increasingly clear is that a great deal of variability exists in the hominin fossil record of eastern Asia and the recently published Hualongdong fossil is just one example (9,10,(17)(18)(19). An increasing number of fossils from regions like China present a mosaic of features whose taxonomic/systematic position is still not clear.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Homo bodoensis and why it matters

Roksandić

Radović

et al. 2022

Evolutionary Anthropology

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In our original paper, we proposed a new species, Homo bodoensis, to replace the problematical taxa Homo heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis, with the goal of streamlining communication about human evolution in the Chibanian. We received two independent responses. Given their substantial overlap, we provide one combined reply. In this response: (1) we are encouraged that the primary proposal in our paper, to discontinue the use of H. heidelbergensis (as a junior synonym to Homo neanderthalensis) due to its' nomenclatural problems, is acknowledged. (2) we provide additional clarification about the rules governing taxonomic nomenclature as outlined by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and join the growing calls for a revision to these rules. (3) we discuss further why H. rhodesiensis should be abandoned, particularly in light of the current sensitivity to using culturally inappropriate names. We conclude that H. bodoensis is a better solution than the proposed alternatives.

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Homo bodoensis and why it matters

Roksandić

Radović

et al. 2022

Evolutionary Anthropology

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“…Originally, these plots were simply developed as a tool to visually explore the structure of multivariate data in a low-dimensional subspace that summarizes the bulk of shape variation along a few components (15,36), but the interpretation of the scatterplot patterns spread in terms of origins, relatedness, evolution, gene flow, speciation, and phenotypic/genotypic variation of the samples and taxa (8,30,41,42,48,49,53,57,59,67,84,111,114). It is also commonly assumed that the proximity of the samples is evidence of relatedness and shared evolutionary history (48,79,114), whereas their absence indicates the opposite. Moreover, the variation/covariation along some PCs is considered to reflect specific morphological traits (16,53,115).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One popular application of modern geometric morphometrics is the classification of newly discovered partial pieces of human skulls with respect to the human phylogenetic tree by visually observing the clustering and proximity of the specimens with each other in PC plots (48,53,114) 53)) plots, even though shape variation along both PC2 and PC3 was relied upon and interpreted in the text (53). Selecting a few PC dimensions and excluding the conflicting results, the authors concluded that homo NR was one of the last survivors of an as-of-yet-unknown population contributing to the Neanderthals and East Asian Homo.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MORPHIX: Resolving sample identification bias in morphometrics analysis with a supervised machine learning package

Mohseni,

Elhaik

2023

Preprint

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Evolutionary biologists, primarily anatomists and ontogenists, employ modern geometric morphometrics to quantitatively analyse physical forms (e.g., skull morphology) and explore relationships, variations, and differences between samples and taxa using landmark coordinates. The standard approach comprises two steps, Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA) followed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA projects the superimposed data produced by GPA onto a set of uncorrelated variables, which can be visualised on scatterplots and used to draw phenetic, evolutionary, and ontogenetic conclusions. Recently, the use of PCA in genetic studies has been challenged. Due to PCA’s central role in morphometrics, we sought to evaluate the standard approach and claims based on PCA outcomes. To test PCA’s accuracy, robustness, and reproducibility using benchmark data of the crania of five papionin genera, we developed MORPHIX, a Python package containing the necessary tools for processing superimposed landmark data with classifier and outlier detection methods, which can be further visualised using various plots. We discuss the case ofHomo Nesher Ramla, an archaic human with a questionable taxonomy. We found that PCA outcomes are artefacts of the input data and are neither reliable, robust, nor reproducible as field members may assume and that supervised machine learning classifiers are more accurate both for classification and detecting new taxa. Our findings raise concerns about PCA-based findings in 18,000 to 32,900 studies. Our work can be used to evaluate prior and novel claims concerning the origins and relatedness of inter- and intra-species and improve phylogenetic and taxonomic reconstructions.

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“…Without informative anatomy preserved, it has not been possible to assign these mysterious hominins to taxon (but see Derevianko, 2011 ; Anagnostou et al., 2015 ; Zubova et al., 2017 ; Agadjanian and Shunkov, 2018 ). However, several candidates may represent this genetic form, including the recently described Homo longi ( Ji et al., 2021 ; Ni et al., 2021 ) and other recent fossil finds from China (e.g., Xuchang: Li et al., 2017 ; Hualongdong: Wu et al., 2019 , 2021 ), in addition to well-studied specimens, such as e.g., the Narmada cranium, India ( Sonakia, 1985 , 2007 ; Sankhyan, 2007 ; Athreya, 2011 ; Kennedy, 2014 ), or the Maba or Jinniushan fossils from China ( Woo and Peng, 1959 ; Wu, 1988 ; 2017 ; Wu and Bruner 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%