Australopithecus and orangutans

[Ken Kinman]

John,
     As I stated a few weeks back, my main problem with your 36
synapomorphies is that many of them may not be independent of one another.
A large percentage of these characters are clustered in the jaws (especially
molars) and the shoulder joint.  If we had a listing of chimp-human
synapomorphies (like your table for orangutan-human), would it show this
same weakness?
    Therein lies my continued skepticism, although I must admit I'm not
quite as skeptical today as I was when you first brought it up.  Actually I
would be delighted if there was an exclusive orangutan-human clade, as it
would help demonstrate the need to weight characters.  Weighting characters
makes many cladists uncomfortable (the subjectivity factor), but it may be
necessary to counter the subjectivity of character choice, evaluating their
possible non-independence, and so on.
     Our present computer algorithms for cladistic analyses will probably
look rather simplistic a decade of two down the road.  And all of this is
true for both morphological and molecular data sets, and thus my skepticism
extends to both sorts of data.  I have little doubt that the current trends
of funding molecular expertise at the expense of morphological expertise
will be very harshly judged as short-sighted and wasteful, especially in
hindsight.
      --------  Ken

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