This Exercise is worth 30 points. As it involves some effort and is not easy or

This Exercise is worth 30 points. As it involves some effort and is not easy or intuitive YOU GET MORE TIME THAN NORMAL to do it. It’s not due until NOVEMBER 13. HOWEVER, you need to TRY to do it before the due date, because you might have questions. Lots of questions. And the best way to get answers is to either come to the Virtual Office Hours or to check in and see if anyone else has asked the questions you need answered.
As you can see from class and the text, there are several different identified species of Australopithecine. At this point, it’s looking like a “splitters'” paradise. Well, for the sake of this question, that time is now officially over, and YOU get to decide how to “lump” the various species together. So, tell me how many different species of Australopithecus and Paranthropus there are going to be. (You can even get rid of the genera Kenyanthropus & Paranthropus, if you’d like and make them all one big happy Australopithecus genus.)
For this you are going to need to pick which Australopithecine species (and genera) are going to persist in your new phylogeny and which are going to get “lumped”. You will need to take the anatomy, the dates given for that species and location(s) where it has been found into account when making your decisions. You do NOT have to consider who discovered the fossil (no “ego-species”, clean that up). You can also abbreviate Australopithecus sp. as A. sp. Ex. You can write A. afarensis instead of Australopithecus afarensis. (TECHNICALLY, if you are going to start lumping you need to find out which of the species you are lumping together were found first and then use that name. I’m not making you do that. So long as it’s clear which species are being grouped, you can pick the name of any of them as the new name, but you have to pick one of the names being used, you haven’t discovered a new species so you don’t get to make one up. I.e. if you are lumping A. africanus, P. boisei and K. platyops together as one species, you need to pick one of those 3 names, like say, A. africanus, as the name of the new species. BTW, don’t lump those three together… )
General Guidelines:
If you have less than 3 species when you finish you are not taking some important distinctions in time, space and biology into account. If you have more than 5, you aren’t lumping enough. Remember you must deal with issues of time and space and biology when you justify the choices you made in lumping species together.
If you group several species together because they all come from East Africa, but they come from different times and are completely different biologically… that’s a bad answer. The only justification you can give is “Found in East Africa” and that’s not good enough.
If you group several species together that come from the same relative time and have the same biological adaptations, that’s a good answer, but you need to just WHY you decided to ignore the thousands of miles of difference between the specimens. Examples: “I decided that biology and chronology was more important than distance because maybe they could walk a long ways…” or “I grouped them together by region then biology and didn’t worry so much about chronology. The differences in biology indicate that the earlier species probably evolved into the later ones…” Or something else.
You will need to use the material from the book and my comments from the lectures on the slides (I will give LOTS of clues and ideas). However, those are unlikely to be enough, particularly for the biological aspects. Since we aren’t in the classroom, with actual replicas of the crania of the species in question, you will need to use the internet to get a good look at the various specimens. Any pictures will definitely help, and I HIGHLY recommend the Smithsonian’s 3D digital collection of Hominin Fossils (though you will have to hit “Show More” SEVERAL times to get the Paranthropus fossils on the bottom): https://3d.si.edu/collections/hominin-fossilsLinks to an external site.. Where the Smithsonian doesn’t have a specimen… well, you do have the rest of the internet…
It will be helpful to use the following worksheet to organize your thoughts as you do this: The first two sheets will help you figure out the reasoning needed for your deliverable. The final page (the “Family Tree”) is a great way to visualize how the species relate to each other in time. This is a BIG HELP, because it is a BIG MISTAKE to lump two species that have a 1 million year gap between when one disappears and the next one shows up. Lumping should ONLY occur between species that “bump up against each other” on your timeline.
I’ll give you a freebie to show you what you should be aiming for:
Kenyanthropus platyops KEEP / LUMP to which species? A. afarensis
Reasoning? Anatomically, the cranium of K. platyops is pretty much identical to A. afarensis. They show the same features, large supraorbital torus, flat head with width at the bottom, robust zygomatics, similar shaped and sized teeth. The date on K. platyops falls right in the middle of A. afarensis and the two are found in E. Africa right next to each other.
Deliverable: On CANVAS you will have to submit your findings. Give the answer by identifying your type species (the name). (Ex. A. africanus) Then identify which former species you are lumping in. DO THIS IN BULLET POINTS! ONE PER FINAL SPECIES YOU”VE CHOSEN!!!! Then give a brief but COMPLETE explanation of why you decided to lump them in way you have chosen to do so (remember time and place and ANATOMY – if you lump things that CLEARLY don’t look alike, you will lose points. Again, if you lump two things and there is a gap of 1 million years from when the first disappears and the second shows up, you will lose points.)
It should look like this:
A. sp.Includes former A. sp., A. othersp., A. anothersp., Kenyanthropus platyops

A. sp2Includes former A. sp2, P. yetanotherspecies

Etc.
Remember YOU DON”T GET TO MAKE UP NEW SPECIES NAMES! YOU did not find the fossils! Use one of the species you have lumped.