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More Hominid Hype: "The Ape That Took Over the World"

By laelaps on June 23, 2009.

If you can handle some more hype about human evolution, here's a snippet from the (more or less) recent BBC documentary "The Ape That Took Over the World." It is about the controversial placement of Kenyanthropus in hominid evolution;



I do not have time to do a full write-up here (especially since I have not as yet seen the show in full), but the evolutionary placement of Kenyanthropus is more controversial than this clip admits. Kenyanthropus appears to be a hominin, but whether it represents a new genus, an already-known form of Australopithecus, or something else is still being debated. It certainly cannot be called one of our direct ancestors with any confidence, contrary to the hype presented in the show.

[Note: I am blogging about this now because the clip was added earlier this month to YouTube, thus I assumed that it had aired recently. I was wrong, but I will leave this post up for anyone (like me) who had not heard about the show.]

Tags
Anthropology
mammals
paleontology

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That documentary is from 2001, why are you commenting on it now? I remember seeing it years ago.

By Ed Supple (not verified) on 23 Jun 2009 #permalink

Ah, I thought it was newer. The upload date for the clip on YouTube is for early June. I wouldn't have expected them to upload something from that long ago. Oh well.

Brian,

What, in your opinion, is the best reference for the hominin family tree as it is currently understood? I lose track of what is well-accepted and what still needs to be fleshed out.

Thanks!

What utter drivel. What utter, utter drivel. Really, words fail me.

By cromercrox (not verified) on 23 Jun 2009 #permalink

James; I'll have to do a little digging. Mike's place is a good place to start, but so much has been found in the last few years that some revisions have to be made. Mike's post is a good starting point, but the base of the hominin bush is really messy right now, plus there are a few taxa that don't fit with the big-time split between early Homo and advanced Australopithecus (i.e. A. africanus, Paranthropus). I will try to e-mail you when I find a tree that I think sums up the present state of things well.

Please cc me when you e-mail James? I'd be very interested to see that as well. Thanks!

Brian, could you comment on two recent articles, they've been mentioned a lot on the net recently by anti-evolutionists;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm
http://pda.physorg.com/humans-apes-orangutans_news164508477.html

Stuff like this can be really quite confusing to people who aren't scientists and don't know what information is reliable. How for example can the morphological data conflict so much with the DNA evidence which so strongly suggests we share a more recent common ancestor with chimps than with gorillas and then orangutans?

Alan; Thank you. The dino-bird post will have to go up at Dinosaur Tracking (Smithsonian gets all my dinosaur-related stuff), but I can cover the other story here. (And to think I was thinking of taking a break from human evolution stories this week!)

Long story short for both of them - researchers who have been pushing a pet hypothesis for years publish two flawed studies that support their preconceived notions in spite of present evidence. (The dino-bird paper even includes a tail-dragging T. rex with THREE fingers from an early 20th century restoration.) The problem is, with good science reporting waning, that university press releases are being used more and more as actual reports. These stories are not going through the journalistic filter where other experts are called up and asked their opinions. I doubt what I write here will make much difference (I think my readers are mostly 'in the know' about science), but I will try to make time to cover both this week.

Brian,

Thanks, and I second Mike K.'s suggestion about making this into a post!