Comments on: Early, somewhat controversial hominid walked like an Australopith

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:38:39 +0000

Joe, you are not serious, right? Please tell us that you are joking.

By: the real cmf

the real cmf — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:46:16 +0000

Joe: how are blacks, in your eyes, “more ape-like”?

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:32:55 +0000

Joe,All human beings pretty much have the same exact features in common with the living apes (chimps, our closest living relatives). Whites have thinner enamel than blacks on average, which makes whites more chimp like. Also, Europeans have smaller brains relative to body size than some groups of blacks living in Africa and at least one group of Native Americans, so that makes whites more ape like.But these differences are all variations on an original theme that was in total derived from apes, so white people should not worry too much that they are more ape like than other kinds of people.

By: joe

joe — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:19:45 +0000

With this evolution thinking, would it be right to believe that blacks are less evolved then whites as they still retain many of the ape like features?

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:35:42 +0000

Bad nomenclature is the root of all evil. Actually, I think botanists have been the most reluctant to accept cladistics. A large number of higher plant are clearly of hybrid origin, and cladistics does not deal well with clades of hybrid origin. It has been thought that hybrid origins were not very important in animals. This idea may be changing. So far as identifying ancestors, I see geneticists reconstructing ancestral genes, but know nothing of the methodology involved.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:16:50 +0000

Hennig is available in English? SO much must be lost in translation….I’m preoccupied with some things that require that I not engage in this debate at this time. But I honestly do want to continue the discussion.

By: David Marjanovi?

David Marjanovi? — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:50:01 +0000

Modern thinking is that all the living (and fossil) great apes are in a single family, the Hominidae.

This is not modern thinking, this is modern nomenclature. Nomenclature is not science, it is convention. The shape of the tree has not changed, we just apply the label Hominidae to another node in it.

If one is thinking cladistically, then identification of ancestors is impossible.

Well, proof that anything is an ancestor is impossible, but that’s not news — science cannot prove, only disprove. If something lacks autapomorphies and has the right age, it enters consideration for being an ancestor of what appears in the cladogram as its sister-group.

I think paleoanthropologists have been the group most reluctant to accept cladistics as a way of generating hypothesis of relationship.

No: entomologists (ironically), malacologists, conodont workers… both paleo- and neo- in the first two cases.

I’m not sure why this is.

The weight of tradition.

To cite Hennig is somewhat comparable to citing Darwin in terms of illustrating modern thinking

Exactly.

(I am not sure which school of cladists I belong to these days).

Are there any left? The pattern cladists have practically died out…

This gives a certain fuzziness to the practice of counting differences in numbers of genera, families, etc to compare diversities.

This is a drastic understatement. If you want to quantify biodiversity, you have to quantify biodiversity instead of trying to count the uncountable. I’ll post references to Faith’s Phylogenetic Diversity Index tomorrow.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:03:34 +0000

I think I had a step aerobics instructor named O’Tugeniensis … an Irish Girl … who really kicked ass.

By: Anne Gilbert

Anne Gilbert — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:57:53 +0000

Hmmmmmm. . . . It sounds like Orrorin tugenensis wouldn’t have had the sort of problems I’ve been having lately(no, they’re not serious). I pulled a muscle in my hip on Tuesday. I was in an exercise class. It wasn’t pretty. Fortunately, I’m recovering at a fairly decent pace, and I will be going back to those exercise classes as of next week. But I doubt if O. tugeniensis would have had that kind of problem, by the sound of it!Anne G

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:52:13 +0000

Yes, I have read Hennig. As you know, cladistics burst on the US scene in 1966 with the publication of Hennig in English. To cite Hennig is somewhat comparable to citing Darwin in terms of illustrating modern thinking (I am not sure which school of cladists I belong to these days). It took cladistics a while to catch on, in part because of the way it was presented to us old fogies (synonym for non cladist). Sarcastic references to the “Cladistic Religion” had more than a grain of truth. In any case, it was the late 90’s before I published my first cladistic analysis based on morphology (not supported by later DNA studies). So I have been a fairly reluctant convert.My professional work has been largely in fish taxonomy at the species to genus level. I am used to the Linnaean system and do not see that it conflicts with phylogeny. There have been a number of articles over the years addressing the issue. One issue is that a phylogeny may need more names for clades that those formally available. One solution is to create non-formal names to fill the gaps as needed. Another issue is that although species may be real, higher taxonomic levels are created by fools like me. This means that the amount of diversity in one genus may be greatly different than diversity in another genus, and so on. This gives a certain fuzziness to the practice of counting differences in numbers of genera, families, etc to compare diversities.Anyway, I understand what you are saying. Have you read Jared Diamonds’s “The Third Champanzee”?