So, really, Homo sapiens and Homo erectus will probably turn out to just be very widespread species throughout Afro-Eurasia that had a lot of regional subspecies? Doesn't seem too surprising to me. Perhaps even Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis will turn out to be two subspecies of the same species as well.
I didn't refer to Homo naledi in my comment, but nonetheless the article does touch on the fact that Homo erectus was a widespread species across Africa-Eurasia, but after nadeli was around.
Looks very well argued, though I'm not exactly in a position to judge the accuracy of either claim.
Still, if Tim White has proposed new species based on very flimsy descriptions and then argues against much better documented species, that's... certainly interesting.
One of the most significant parts of this rebuttal is this team's commitment to open scientific data. They've made 3d shape files available on http://morphosource.org/ and encourage critics and reviewers to print out the bones and compare them.
Imagine the kind of access this gives laypeople! Everyone from poor institutions in developing nations to high schools in farm towns can now duplicate these bones for research or to simply inspire wonder about human history because of new technology and one team's belief in free information.
The end of the pbs documentary on the excavation suggested that because there is proof of interbreeding among different Homo species, that the hierarchical genus-species-subspecies framework may not work as well as a mesh-like graph.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 24.4 ms ] threadStill, if Tim White has proposed new species based on very flimsy descriptions and then argues against much better documented species, that's... certainly interesting.
Imagine the kind of access this gives laypeople! Everyone from poor institutions in developing nations to high schools in farm towns can now duplicate these bones for research or to simply inspire wonder about human history because of new technology and one team's belief in free information.