Re: The taxonomy of Sahelanthropus tchadensis from a craniometric perspective

On 4.8.2024. 14:05, Pandora wrote:

Op 04-08-2024 om 13:17 schreef Mario Petrinovic:

On 4.8.2024. 10:38, Pandora wrote:

Op 04-08-2024 om 00:17 schreef JTEM:

  Pandora wrote:

It's a rather strange, counterintuitive, result that the cladistically most basal hominin, Sahelanthropus, is morphometrically closer to Homo than to Australopithecus and the great apes.

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It's not a science it's an art, an interpretation. Value
judgments.
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Secondly, and let's be honest here, the fossil record sucks.
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No, it doesn't "have gaps," it is a gap. It's a chasm, a
massive expanse of nothingness punctuated by the all too
rare pieces of bone.
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Sahelanthropus is found in the wrong place. There is only the
one individual represented. There is no basis for any
determinations what so ever.

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Actually, there's more than one individual of this taxon, from three different localities (TM 247, TM 266 and TM 292). This additional material was announced in Nature in 2005:
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https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/3716603
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Not too far from where another hominin taxon, Australopithecus bahrelghazali, was discovered in 1995.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/378273a0
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If you think that's the wrong place you must have some concept of what is the right place. Where would that be?

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         Actually, it isn't in the wrong place. Lake Megachad is at the end of Cameroon rift. This is very similar to lake Victoria and East-African rift.

 For African fault basin structure in relation to early hominin biography see "Pliocene hominin biogeography and ecology" by Gabriele A. Macho, in particular fig.3:
 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282980219
 Northern Chad may have been a refugium for migrating mammals, but it may just as well have been a place of origin for what is hypothesized to be the oldest hominin.
 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04901-z

If you want to learn about the origins, please read Bible. WTF? If there is something you want to say, say it. I wasted my time reading the abstract of the first paper, and there is no mention of rifts. I don't think that this woman knows what she is talking about, but hey, she did some research, she wrote a paper about it, so everybody who does this knows the things, in your world. Well, not in mine.