Re: CHAT Almost well-formed southern ape (wasRe: Teknonyms)

Quoting Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>:

> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:43, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm back now in the UK and on list. I meant to post the following before
> > > my short sojourn in France:
> > >
> > > Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> > > > R A Brown skrev:
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > >> _australis_ "southern" is a perfectly good Latin adjective. But if
> > > >> this were a properly formed Latin compound, it would be
> > > >> 'Australipithecus' "southern ape".
> > > >>
> > > >> Sigh.
> > > >
> > > > "Notiopithecus" had not only been perfect Greek, it had also
> > > > precluded the notion that the critter lived in Australia!
> > >
> > > One would think the epithet 'africanus' would, er,  a sort of gives away
> > > its habitat.
> >
> > Well, that's fine for Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, A.
> > bahrelghazali and A. aethiopicus, but not for A. anamensis, A. robustus, A.
> > garhi, and A. boisei.
> >
> > (The splittists would place aethiopicus, robustus, and boisei in the
> > separate genus Paranthropus.)
>
> Judging from the two facts that aethiopicus, robustos, and boisei had
> decidedly different dentition and eating habits from the gracile
> australopithecines that became genus homo, and also they appear to have left
> no descendants, I would say the splittists are right.  Paranthropus -
> near-human - would appear to be right.
I quite agree, but at least in semipopular literature, the lumpist approach is
usually taken.

                                              Andreas

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