Re: Bidpedalism
HARRY R. ERWIN (herwin@osf1.gmu.edu)
2 Jun 1995 23:31:24 GMT
Jim Foley (jimf@vangelis.FtCollins.NCR.com) wrote:
: In article <3qki2g$dd4@portal.gmu.edu>,
: HARRY R. ERWIN <herwin@osf1.gmu.edu> wrote:
: >I ran into an interesting book by Oxnard on the postcranial adaptions of
: >primates and australopithecines. The evidence is fairly strong that their
: >motor behavior was like nothing known today. You can deduce that they
: >probably were bipedal on the ground, but spent most of their time moving
: >arboreally in the trees. H. habilis seems to be similar.
: Is this his 1987? book, called "Fossils, Teeth and Sex", I think? I
: haven't read it yet, only glanced through it in the library.
The Order of Man, Yale and Hongkong, 1983.
: Oxnard also seems to think, according to one of the diagrams in that
: book, that humans are not descended from any of the australopithecines,
: and that the piths split off from a common ancestor about the same time
: that we and the chimps did. That's what I understood from his book,
: anyway.
I think he was a researcher into Ramapithecus when that was thought to be
an ancestor. You summarized his position fairly well. He believes H.
habilis was an A. My database differs, but not totally.
: Is this a correct statement of his views, and how likely are they to be
: correct?
I think the H/A split was later than the P/G/A/H split, but the
habilis/erectus split was significantly earlier than the habilines we know.
: Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins
: Jim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765
: The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues
: further into dogmeat. -- Sir Geoffery de Tourneville, ca 1350 A.D.
--
Harry Erwin
Internet: herwin@gmu.edu
PhD student in comp neurosci: "Glitches happen" & "Meaning is emotional"
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