New book on climate and human evolution 10 Mar 2010 I hope this works and WordPress doesn’t strip out the HTML code [later note: It did]. This looks like an interesting book, although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian. Biology Evolution Species and systematics
Ecology and Biodiversity What is an individual? 11 Aug 2007 Rob Wilson has a new entry up at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entitled “The Biological notion of an individual”. It discusses an interesting problem, one that goes back to discussions by Julian Huxley in 1911. What is an individual in biology? Read More
Epistemology What should evolutionary psychology comprise? 25 Jul 201125 Jul 2011 Recently there have been a number of posts and comments on evolutionary psychology. A new paper in PLoS Biology argues that human brain evolution since the “stone age” (really?) has been rapid and multifaceted. And there are renewed calls for evolutionary psychology to change. As usual, John Hawks has a… Read More
Evolution New work on speciation 5 Aug 2008 Just lately there’s been a flurry of papers on speciation that I haven’t had time to digest properly. Several of them seem to support “sympatric” or localised speciation based on selection for local resources with reproductive isolation a side effect of divergent selection. So here they are below the fold… Read More
Interesting. You don’t really see diagrams that take the “tree” metaphor so far any more. I wonder if they just did this for purely nostalgic reasons. The pdf ought to make for good spring break reading…….Ah, who am I kidding. I’ll have more work during spring break than I do when school is in session. :-/
It’s been suggested previously that climate/vegetation played an important role in human evolution, but our time interval precision has been too fluffy to provide anything definitive. It is certainly reasonable to assume a role for climate and vegetation (the increase in grass over trees for example) but the reality is that it’s probably a mess of factors interacting at various levels. Biology is meesy like that.
Not quite as clunky as the weird spinal cord that ran with Ardipithecus last year. But, similar in a way with all of that fake data and chart junk. I blame g.g. simpson. Just kidding. No I’m not. Yeah, I am.
are there really data supporting those side branches that went extinct? I count three each on the bonobo and chimpanzee branches in the pleistocene, and numerous others throughout.
No direct data as far as I know, but evolutionary theory predicts that there would be such branches. Their particular placement is just arbitrary, as far as I can tell. The only extinct side branch on the chart supported by data, that I know of, is paranthropus.
Is there are problem with this style of depicting evolving species? I realise that we shouldn’t read it as ascent to some pre-planned outcome or with progress. However, it is accurate in respect of time and putative branching isn’t it? Is it considered old fashion and not now done because some fear people may see it as ascent?
the short side branches that imply extinctions are probably not accurate or based on real fossil data, but as Wes said, the theory predicts extinctions, so it appears those branches were added arbitrarily to show that. I don’t think this tree necessarily implies some kind of directional progress though.
Thanks Paul, It was the comment made by our host although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian. , as well as the note by Wes You don’t really see diagrams that take the “tree” metaphor so far any more. I wonder if they just did this for purely nostalgic reasons. that had me somewhat at a loss and wondering what is wrong with the diagram, if anything.
I can’t see very much wrong with your tree – but JW was *probably* hoping for a few more indications of “horizontal” gene transfer.