Australopithecus and orangutans

[John Grehan]

At 09:46 AM 5/14/2003 -0400, Jason de Koning wrote:
>>...(and one's skepticism should be based on some kind of direct appraisal
>>of the characters)...
>
>>the total number of proposed human-orangutan synapomorphies currently
>>stands at 36 (and some may be more robust than others).
>
>Well since that's how you feel, the total number of molecular
>synapomorphies supporting ((human, chimp) orang) is probably around 3-5
>orders of magnitude beyond that figure at the moment.  Do you yet care to
>confront your skepticism and "directly appraise" those characters?

The difference is that the morphological synapomorphies can each be treated
on their own merits whereas the molecular characters are an unknown mix of
apomorphic and plesiomorphic states. In Ken's case he is positing one set
of synapomorphies (human-chimp) over another (human-orangutan).

John


>- Jason
>
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Dr. John Grehan
Director of Science and Collections
Buffalo Museum of Science
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jgrehan at sciencebuff.org
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