Hominin Taxic Diversity: Fact or Fantasy?

Dr. Bernard Wood
University Professor of Human Origins and Professor of Human Evolutionary Anatomy
George Washington University

We looked at the hominin fossil record in a series of time intervals and used current published evidence about the first and last appearance dates of each taxon to decide whether a species or specimens should be included in one, or more, of the intervals. Within each time interval we consider the strength of the evidence that more than one hominin species is sampled. With the exception of the earliest (7-5 Ma), all of the other time intervals have in our judgment at least one well-supported example of taxic diversity and several have multiple examples. In summary, not all new hominin taxa are created equally, but while taxic diversity may not be as prevalent as some have claimed, it is a feature of the hominin clade from 4 Ma until c.40 ka years ago.