Hominid Systematics

[CDarwin]

I don't know if I'll get any bites on this, but:

 

I've just read yet another scheme for hominid systematics. I'm not really posting about that specific scheme (it's the one in Stones, Bones, and Molecules, Cameron and Groves [2004]), but trying to see if anyone here has any specific opinions on the subject. Some guidance for a poor undergraduate. There are just so many of these phylogenetic trees (Svante Paabo has an interesting take on the reason: http://johnhawks.net/node/2093). Anyway, how would you parse our ancestors?

[Mokele]

Honestly, it strikes me as a bit of "too many cooks". There's what, 2 dozen species of hominid, extant and extinct? And how many people working on phylogenies?

 

And broadly speaking, the tree is pretty stable (at least compared to, say, deep trees of invertebrates, which change with every third issue of Nature), and quite supportable (compared to, say, ancient crocodilians, where you're better off making a tree using some dice and a dart board).

 

 

Anyhow, one thing that always helps me is drawing a strict consensus tree, a tree that includes only the taxa and relationships that *everyone* agrees on (such as gibbons being the most basal clade of hominids). Once you've done that, you'll probably find that there's only a handful of spots of disagreement, which you can focus on and which will make it easier to see the basis of the disagreements.