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'Tattersall I, 2005: Species Concepts and Hominid Diversity in Later Pleistocene Europe. Anthropologie (Brno) 43, 2-3: 207-213'. |
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| Abstract | | The concept of the species continues to elude easy definition, and indeed it seems true that different contexts will always demand different definitions. Morphology must necessarily be the principal criterion for species recognition in the fossil record, and Jolly's (2001) recent perception that morphologically differentiated African baboon populations may simultaneously serve the roles of "biological" subspecies and "phylogenetic" species places us in a better theoretical position to infer that adequately distinctive fossil morphs do indeed represent the historically individuated entities which conventionally warrant recognition as species. In this article I briefly examine how different notions of the species and their role in evolutionary process have affected the perception of pattern in the hominid fossil record, and point out that on the basis of unusually rich fossil documentation the species Homo neanderthalensis emerges as an entity that in evolutionary terms was entirely distinct from Homo sapiens. Further, it appears that this species formed part of a larger endemic European clade that, in the form of the hominid found at the Sima de los Huesos, coexisted with Homo heidelbergensis as represented by the Mauer and Arago hominids. Evidently, hominid evolution in Europe, prior to the relatively recent incursion of Homo sapiens, was not limited to the progressive evolution of a single endemic lineage. | | | | Keywords | | Species concepts - Homo neanderthalensis - Homo sapiens - Neanderthals - Hominid fossil record - Evolutionary entities - Paleoanthropology | | |
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