Op donderdag 23 maart 2023 om 03:36:04 UTC+1 schreef Peter Nyikos:
...
vm:

Naledi was an australopith, of course, a fossil relative of bonobo/chimp, google e.g. "Not Homo, but Pan or Australopithecus naledi".

Peter:

The original title had a question mark at the end. This clashes with your "of course".

The "?" is also to not scare possible readers - for googling, you don't need it.

Why not post the url instead of telling people to google?

Yes, I'm from the pre-computer era. :-)

Here it is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317336008_Not_Homo_but_Pan_or_Australopithecus_naledi

"Discoverers of the naledi fossils (Gauteng, S-Africa, first described in 2015) assume: naledi
1) belonged to the genus Homo,
2) buried their dead in caves,
3) were tool makers,
4) ran over African plains.
Comparative anatomy shows these assumptions to be wrong: naledi
1) belonged to the genus Pan or Australopithecus,
2) fossilized in a natural way,
3) were no better tool makers than extant chimps are,
4) spent an important part of their day wading bipedally in forest swamps or wetlands, in search for wetland foods: waterlilies or other aquatic herbaceous vegetation (AHV, possibly containing snail shells), like bonobos & lowland gorillas still do, but
more frequently."

...

The earliest undoubted Homo fossils come from SE.Asia (H.erectus):
apiths are apelike: all early discoverers said they had discovered ape fossil apes. Only afterwards, PAs began their anthropo- & afro-centric nonsense (you get more attention & subsidies if you find a human rather than an ape ancestor): "our nearest
relatives are Pan & Gorilla, therefore we evolved in Africa, and had Afr.apelike ancestors".

Most likely, the late-Miocene Gorilla-Homo-Pan LCA lived in swamp forests of the (incipient) Red Sea:
- 8 or 7 Ma, Gorilla followed the incipient northern Rift -> Afar,
- 6 or 5 Ma (Francesca Mansfield thinks: 5.33 Ma Zanclean mega-flood), the Red Sea openied into the Gulf/Aden: Pan went right (E.Afr.coast -> southern Rift -> Transvaal), Homo went left -> Java early-Pleist.H.erectus dived: all pachyosteosclerotic
tetrapods ar slow+shallow divers!! See also larger brain (DHA), shell engravings (google "Joordens Munro"), stone tools, handiness, voluntary breathing, hyoidal descent & small mouth (suction-feeding) etc.etc. Only idiotic kuku runners fantasy their
ancestors ran after antelopes on hot Afr.savannas, sweating water+sodium... :-DDD

Don't forget that paleontologists do not dig for fossils unless there is some sign
on the surface of the ground of their presence. And a rain forest is not the best
place to find large tracts of exposed ground.

Of course, but today's PAs find always "human ancestors" ("hominin" :-D "because bipedal"), never fossil relatives of Pan or Gorilla...
= statistically alone aleady +-impossible.
And when we look at the details (e.g. my Hum.Evol.papers 1990, 1994, 1996) there's no doubt:
E.Afr.apiths = fossil Gorilla // S.Afr.apiths = fossil Pan:
they evolved in parallel from "gracile" late-Pliocene -> robust" early-Pleist.: northern Rift Praeanthropus afarensis -> boisei // southern Rift Australopithecus africanus -> robustus
(the term "Paranthropus" is paraphyletic = useless & confusing).


Mio-Pliocene Hominoidea were "bipedal", simply for wading+climbing in swamp forests, as still seen now & then (in spite of Pleist.coolings?) in lowland gorillas, bonobos & orangs.

There are weightier counter-arguments. Here is an article that, while not arbitrarily dismissive of the "other hominin" hypothesis, nevertheless gives evidence of membership in Homo:
https://theconversation.com/chipped-teeth-suggests-homo-naledi-had-a-unique-diet-80714

Thanks, here it is, a bit shortened:

40 % of naledi teeth are affected = very high, but this chipping is not distributed evenly over the teeth:

-- back-teeth are the most fractured: >1/2 have at least 1 chip, many have multiple small chips,
-- front-teeth are still affected >> other spp: >30 % have 1 chip or more. ... cf. H.naledi has >2x the chipping rate of Au.africanus, 4x of Par.robustus (2 extinct hominin(sic --mv) spp, often thought to have commonly consumed hard foods ... (sedges?? rice?? shells?? nuts?? ...?? --mv)
vs gorillas c 10% of teeth chipped, chimps 5%,
naledi's multiple small chips (sometimes >5 on 1 tooth) are not found on any individual in the comparative samples: did this species have a unique diet?
The species with the most similar rate & pattern of chipping to H.naledi is baboons: 25% of their teeth have fractures. (grass?rice seeds?? --mv) ...
Some Hs also show chipping cf naledi, incl. Inuit & Austr.Aboriginal & fossils of dead Hs from other groups,
but the pattern of chipping is substantially different: Hs tend to show the most fractures on the front-teeth.
The few archeol.examples + similar fracture patterns support: naledi's chipping relates to diet, not to using teeth as tools.

The most powerful evidence for me is the complete lower jaw illustrated between the 2nd & 3rd of the above paragraphs. The teeth, and the way the lower jaw narrows to the front, cry "Homo!" at me. The teeth are in similar proportion to my own, except

that my wisdom teeth were impacted. Peter Nyikos

:-)
They cry "baboon diet" to me... grass/rice seeds?? ...??
Are there comparisons with H.erectus? with P.paniscus?

IMO, naledi is simply a fossil Pan species.
What caused the chipping? e.g. bonobos wade for waterlilies, lowland gorillas for sedges etc.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)