[Taxacom] orangtuans and human origins

[John Grehan]

As some of you know, I and my colleague Jeff Schwartz are preparing a
paper on the biogeography and morphological cladistics of humans, great
apes, and their fossil relatives that presents support for the monophyly
of hominids and orangutans to the exclusion of African apes. This has
now gone through two reviews and the last review resulted in the
suggestion that we present an explicit rationale for our taking the
route of reliance on morphology over genetic analyses by clearly setting
out the starting assumptions on which our analyses rest and address the
choices we took to "ignore the 'mainstream' molecular-based work" in
favor of the analyses we present. 

 

One aspect that I might include is reference to other taxa where well
supported morphological relationships are not congruent with DNA
molecular analysis. I would be surprised if the human-orangutan
relationship is not the sole example. If anyone knows of other published
cases I would be pleased to receive citations.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

John Grehan