Comment
This is awesome and timely! I’m doing human evolution in my general biology class this week and I’ve been looking for just such a case. I have one concern that I would like to past back to the authors.
I know that there are disagreements among paleoanthropologists, but I’m finding that most of my sources include Pan (chimps) in the Hominini Tribe. This case appears to exclude chimps from the Hominini (commonly refered to as Hominins).
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Primates
- Superfamily: Hominoidea
- Family: Hominidae
- Subfamily: Homininae
- Tribe: Hominini
- Subtribe Panina: Genus Pan (chimp-like) Subtribe Hominina: Genus Homo (human-like) + Extinct Genera:
- †Paranthropus
- †Australopithecus
- †Sahelanthropus
- †Orrorin
- †Ardipithecus
- †Kenyanthropus
Comments submitted 10/29/2009 by:
Caryn Self-Sullivan, PhD
Department of Biology
Georgia Southern University
cselfsullivan@georgiasouthern.edu
Authors’ Reply
Thanks for your comments on our case.
There is still a dispute among paleoanthropologists about the use of the term hominin. The term is used for the taxonomic level of tribe and the dispute addresses how closely related chimps and humans are. The most common usage is that used in our case, based on the assumption that chimp and human lineages are different tribes and using hominin for the human lineage. There are two competing usages. The one you use assumes that chimp and human lineages belong to one tribe, the hominin. Finally, a third group of paleoanthropologists argues strongly that chimps and humans belong to the same genus and refers to chimps as Homo troglodytes. We have added a note about this controversy to the case teaching notes.
