The Flattening of the Evolutionary Tree?

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

This, for readers who have managed to maintain an interest in the ever widening palaeoanthropological African rifts:

A Nature Science Update report on a recent Science “article” by Tim White on the true meaning of  the word “platypus”, as in “Kenyanthropus platypus”.

Flat-faced Man in family feud
Palaeontologist claims geology set human relative apart.
Nature Science Update, 28 March 2003

REX DALTON

A leading palaeontologist is questioning the heritage of a 3.5-million-year-old fossil skull hailed two years ago as a new human relative1. It's just one example, he suggests, of scientists being too quick to give us a bushy family tree.

The fossil hit the headlines in 2001 when Meave Leakey of National Museums of Kenya and colleagues described it as evidence of a new human-like lineage. They named their specimen Kenyanthropus platypus2 - literally, the 'Flat-faced Man of Kenya'.

Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, now argues that K. platypus was more probably a Kenyan variant of one of the most famous human ancestors of all time - 'Lucy', discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. This fossil skeleton was formally named Australopithecus afarensis3.

Geology, not genes, gave the Flat-faced Man his distinctive looks, White reckons. Over time, he explains, fine-grained rock invaded tiny cracks in the skull and distorted its shape in an irregular way.

You can read the remainder of this short report HERE

The original article:

White, T. 2003. Early Hominids - Diversity or Distortion? Science 299: 1994 – 1997.

… can be read HERE

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Martin Davison]

We can't all be lumpers surely! Isn't there a single palaeontologist out there prepared to speak up for the flat-faced Kenyan platypus?

In the course of his short essay Tim White lists a number of recently adopted taxa based on minimal fossil evidence and asks:

"But does the resultant nomenclature accurately reflect early hominid species diversity?"

Intriguingly one of the new species names on his list is Ardipithecus ramidus. Is he perhaps about to reclassify his own somewhat minimally described fossils?

Martin  

[rmacfarl]

Excuse me if I haven't spotted an in-joke, but the species name is Kenyanthropus *platyops* (as in flat faced Kenya man), not *platypus* (as in flat-footed, duckbilled Australian monotreme)...

Regards,

Ross Macfarlane

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Excuse me if I haven't spotted an in-joke, but the species name is Kenyanthropus *platyops* (as in flat faced Kenya man), not *platypus* (as in flat-footed, duckbilled Australian monotreme)...

Regards,

Ross Macfarlane

Yes, you are right. But you will notice that the the original quote (a cut-and-paste job) from the Nature Science Update (see my first message on this) did mention "platypus". It has since been corrected by the Nature editors.

Jacques Cinq-Mars