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

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.

Wesley Parish
>
>                                                    Andreas
--
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