An inventory and assessment of the early African hominin fossil record prior to the emergence of Homo erectus

It is important to have an overview of the nature and composition of the hominin fossil record before generating hypotheses about the record itself. For all but the past few hundred thousand years, skeletal and dental morphology is the only evidence we have of our extinct ancestors and close relatives. With a few exceptions, most lists of fossil hominin data have been assembled for single sites, formations, or taxa, with little attention paid to how different regions of the skeleton contribute to the hypodigms of taxa recognized in the hominin fossil record. Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive inventory of the fossil evidence for early African hominins whose origins predate the emergence of Homo erectus, in a novel and fine-resolution coding scheme. Those data are analyzed to determine the nature of any differences in hypodigm composition among the study taxa. Chapter 2 uses that information to systematically resample metric datasets to simulate the effects of taphonomic degradation using three hominin fossils (ARA-VP-6/500, Ardipithecus ramidus, SK 48, Paranthropus robustus, and OH 7, Homo habilis s.s.) and testing how alpha taxonomic grouping changes in response to that resampling. Lastly, Chapter 3 takes a similar approach using those same case study fossils to resample a character state matrix to test the effects of character resampling on tree topology and node confidence levels in a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis. In summary, this dissertation presents a comprehensive inventory of the early hominin fossil record and then tests the inherent limitations of that record on hypothesis generation in paleoanthropology.

Author

• McRae, Ryan

Language

• en

Keyword

• Phylogenetics
• Evolution
• Hominin
• Paleoanthropology
• Taxonomy
• Anthropology

Date created

• 2023

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Hominid Paleobiology

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Wood, Bernard A

Committee Member(s)

• Baab, Karen L
• Pyron, R Alex
• Barr, W Andrew
• Mongle, Carrie C

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/v692t7109