4
$\begingroup$

I'm no biologist, but I'm curious what the rough phylogenetic tree looks like for Hominin. Could you create a rough sketch that includes:

  • Homo rudolfensis
  • Homo ergaster
  • H. georgicus
  • H. antecessor
  • H. cepranensis
  • H. rhodesiensis
  • Homo neanderthalensis
  • Denisova hominin
  • Homo floresiensis
  • H. heidelbergensis
  • H. neanderthalensis
  • H. sapiens
  • H. erectus
  • H. habilus
  • any others I may have missed

Feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions I may have made here, or clarify anything that could be instructive.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5
$\begingroup$

Gonzalez-Jose et al. (2008) published the following cladograms, based on two analyses (parsimony versus maximum likelihood). The table shows the legend. The interesting case of Homo floriensis, among others are not included, likely because of their recent discoveries and limitations of the study cited.

enter image description hereenter image description here

Reference
- Gonzalez-Jose et al. Nature (2008); 453 775-79

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Great answer, but one thing to note about the upper tree is that the Bremer support values are really really low (0.2 to 0.5) particularly within Homo. So basically there is no resolution at that point. They may as well have a large polytomy at that point. This is not a fault of the authors but of all these fossils being fragmentary. $\endgroup$
    – kmm
    Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 12:42
  • $\begingroup$ @kmm - This is pretty much over the top of my head - Please advice, should I crop the image and only show the bottom tree instead? Piece of cake to do so. I simply pasted their complete figure in here without critically assessing their respective merits to the question. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD ♦
    Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 12:50
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ No, it's fine as is. The tree is the tree and is (very likely) technically correct. It's just that the devil is in the details. I'm sure the bottom tree is equally poorly supported. $\endgroup$
    – kmm
    Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 12:54

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .