[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

[Stephen Thorpe]

"By logical extension, hypothetical neanderthalensis and heidelbergensis clades, regardless of their relationship to a sapiens clade, should be regarded as separate genera"

By logical extension, I would infer that the author is a cladist with little or no understanding of taxonomy! The quoted statement is nonsense at every level! It just makes no sense at all! There are no universal taxonomic criteria for what constitutes a genus (other than monophyly). Therefore you just make the genus Homo inclusive enough to include all 3 clades - easy peasy, problem solvedy!

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 31/5/18, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens
 To: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Thursday, 31 May, 2018, 11:00 AM
 
 From the cited paper:
 "...For, if the suggestion of a clade that includes
 H. sapiens is correct, it follows that Homo
 should be restricted to members
 of this
 clade. By logical extension, hypothetical neanderthalensis
 and
 heidelbergensis clades, regardless of
 their relationship to a sapiens
 clade,
 should be regarded as separate genera." This sounds
 like devil's
 advocacy to me (or
 reduction to the absurd) - if workers cannot even agree
 on whether of not neanderthalensis is a
 subspecies of sapiens, putting it
 into a
 separate genus makes no sense to this observer - or perhaps
 I am
 missing something.
 
 Also I noticed an odd statement at the
 beginning - "Thus it fell upon
 Blumenbach (1969) to provide the first
 morphological diagnosis of Homo
 sapiens." - especially considering that
 the Blumenbach in question died
 some 129
 years earlier (I remembered from the recent thread in which
 we
 discussed the earliest scientific name
 for the dingo). I checked the cited
 reference and it is a 1969 reprint of an 1865
 work published under the
 title "The
 anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich
 Blumenbach", in
 which is reprinted 
 Blumenbach's "On the natural variety of
 mankind",
 first(?) published in 1775.
 So if "Blumenbach (1969)" were replaced by
 "Blumenbach
 (1775)"
 it would make rather more sense. Hopefully the remainder of
 the
 paper is a bit more factually correct
 :)
 
 Regards - Tony
 
 Tony Rees, New South Wales,
 Australia
 https://about.me/TonyRees
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