Some Fallacies in the Study of Hominid Phylogeny

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Abstract
The fossil hominoids of the Miocene of Kenya do not now appear to belong to the early part of that epoch, as had been previously believed, but may be of middle or, less probably, late Miocene age. Similarities between hominoids of the Miocene in India and Kenya, together with resemblances in other members of the two faunas, suggest that the Chinji Zone of the Siwaliks may be middle or late Miocene, as originally suggested by several early workers. At this time the "radiation" which produced the great apes of today and man seems barely to have begun. The possible occurrence of Dryopithecus in early Miocene equivalents of Egypt requires further investigation. There is nearly universal agreement among those most competent to judge that Oreopithecus does not stand in the ancestral line of later pongids and hominids, although it is related to them. In view of these conclusions, the origins of man and of the great great apes of Africa and Borneo are seen to lie directly among the dryopithecines. This conclusion supports the extensive discussions of Gregory as to the significance for human phylogeny of the Dryopithecus molar pattern and LeGros Clark''s analysis of the morphological evidences favoring the occurrence of secondary canine reduction in the ancestry of Hominidae. There is now adequate fossil evidence to indicate, (i) that, from about middle Miocene times, a few widely distributed species of the larger hominoids were present in both Eurasia and Africa and that successive differentiation of these species, through time, has occurred, with little branching or radiation; (ii) that the primary center of speciation among these animals was outside of Europe; (iii) that some dryopithecines in known parts entirely close the slight morphological gap between Hominidae and Pongidae; and (iv) that, if reports as to localities of Australopithecus by several students be accepted, the data now show that this earliest generally accepted antecedent of man was widely distributed in tropical regions of the Old World in the early Pleistocene. Present archeological evidence does suggest that the use of tools may have occurred first in Africa, but this is not the same as to suppose that the initial species of man differentiated there, unless man be defined solely as a tool-manufacturing primate. To date, the latter supposition is an inference primarily supported by negative evidence [long dash]namely, the scanty recovery of australopithecines and of pebble tools in Southeast Asia and China. It must be remembered that one creditable occurrence is all that is needed to demonstrate the early presence of Australopithecus in the East. Such an occurrence apparently has now been confirmed by von Koenigswald, through his description of about a dozen teeth, assigned by him to a new genus, "Hemianthropus," in materials recovered from Chinese drugstores. In my opinion these teeth are from members of the Australopithecinae assignable to the subgenus Paranthropus, but Woo suggests that some of these teeth could belong to Gigantopithecus.
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