Anthropology.net

Afarensis has chimed in on the Ilert fossils, as well as Ann Gibbons of Science. Please check out both their pieces on these two fossils.

To make this a more complete post, I’m also shamelessly plucking a well-illustrated diagram of hominin evolution from Afarensis’ post. I don’t know where he got it from… But, I’m using it to make a point that if anyone ever thought that paleoanthropologists propose that human evolution is entirely anagenetic, then they are wrong.

Of course, one branch of human evolution was ultimately anagenetic — hell, it led to us, H. sapiens! However, as Afarensis mentions, both cladogenesis and anagensis have played a role throughout human evolution. It really is a matter on how narrow you want to view the scope down in on… and at the point it comes down to says H. erectus versus H. habilis, then I consider it futile even foolish to debate one or the other.