[Taxacom] hominid evidence

[Richard Zander]

Julian Huxley, I understand, suggested we are the "Psychozoa" (as
mentioned by a previous taxacomer). That's overly autapomorphic, I
think, unless . . . 

If there were a hox gene that coded for large brains, then porpoises,
whales, and other big-brained, cultured, music-appreciating organisms
might have an evolutionary ancestor shared with us down there in the
genome. I await with some trepidation new evo-devo discoveries and new
cladistic trees reorganizing the Crown of Evolution into a clade based
on hoax genes.  :)

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Richard H. Zander 
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-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Dr. David
Campbell
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 11:30 AM
To: John Grehan
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] hominid evidence

On the specific example of human-ape comparisons, a significant 
difficulty is that humans are morphologically highly apomorphic