A lineage perspective on hominin taxonomy and evolution.
Evol Anthropol
; 33(2): e22018, 2024 Apr.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38217397
ABSTRACT
An uncritical reliance on the phylogenetic species concept has led paleoanthropologists to become increasingly typological in their delimitation of new species in the hominin fossil record. As a practical matter, this approach identifies species as diagnosably distinct groups of fossils that share a unique suite of morphological characters but, ontologically, a species is a metapopulation lineage segment that extends from initial divergence to eventual extinction or subsequent speciation. Working from first principles of species concept theory, it is clear that a reliance on morphological diagnosabilty will systematically overestimate species diversity in the fossil record; because morphology can evolve within a lineage segment, it follows that early and late populations of the same species can be diagnosably distinct from each other. We suggest that a combination of morphology and chronology provides a more robust test of the single-species null hypothesis than morphology alone.
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Texto completo:
1
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Hominidae
Límite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article