Re: The taxonomy of Sahelanthropus tchadensis from a craniometric perspective

On 4.8.2024. 19:34, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

On 4.8.2024. 19:26, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

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.

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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:
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282980219
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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.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04901-z

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         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.

          I mean, what I wanted to say? Did this woman research subcutaneous fat? If not, why not? You give me one piece of puzzle, and act very smart. And this piece of puzzle is just another piece of paper. Just the other day I watched some show where there was a real criminal forensic researcher talking about what she is doing. In short, she said that people have wrong impression, people think that, if you have a body, and you have bullets in it, that forensic researcher can determine exactly what happened. Well, he cannot. What she actually does is, somebody presents a scenario to her, and she says whether the evidence is in tune with the scenario, or it isn't.

And this goes for real life situations, something that happened today, in our society, done by humans we know everything about them, done in known location, where you can measure absolutely everything, and yet, you can apply how much science you can on it, and still you will get nothing, until some smart guy comes with a realistic scenario.