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Au. sediba pelvis: not "hominin" but hominid?

Posted by marc_verhaegen on 24 Sep 2019 at 00:08 GMT

Thanks for this interesting article. I fully agree with the conclusion that the australopith pelvis mostly resulted from their locomotion (the newborn's brain size was no problem), but this locomotion was perhaps not what the authors had in mind. Most likely, early hominoids were already vertical, not for running over open plains as traditionally assumed, but rather for climbing vertically and wading bipedally in the forest swamps where Mio-Pliocene hominoids including australopiths typically fossilized. The reconstructed Au. sediba pelvis was not that of an early "hominin" (read: human ancestor, to the exclusion Pan & Gorilla), but simply that of an early hominid (sensu: fossil relative of Pan, Homo and Gorilla). The iliac elongation of the great apes probably evolved during the Pleistocene in parallel in Pongo, Pan and Gorilla, but it did not evolve in Homo, and only to a very limited degree in hylobatids (see e.g. Schultz "The Life of Primates"). For a more thorough discussion, please google e.g. "Ape and Human evolution 2018 Verhaegen", or see our paper Verhaegen, Puech & Munro 2002 "Aquarboreal Ancestors?" Trends in Ecol. Evol. 17:212-7.

No competing interests declared.
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