Talk:Homininae

message: To the anon who keeps changing the terminology:
TaxonNounAdjective
Hominoideahominoidhominoidal
Hominidaehominidhominide
Homininaehomininhominine
Hominininone
These are the definitions we are using. Scientists mix and match, depending usually on when they started using the various terms. "Hominoid" used to mean what "hominid" now means. "Hominin" used to mean what "hominid" now means. These terms have shifted meaning as our understanding of the taxonomic relationships have changed. See ape for the history of this understanding. Perhaps we can work on how to put this explanation into an article. - UtherSRG
Note that there is another terminology, in which the term "hominin" refers to Tribe hominini and the term "hominine" refers to Subfamily homininae. See the resource below for more information.
YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 41:93-136 (1998) (available at http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/X-PDF/Potts98.pdf; 
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Hominoids.html; 
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1204_hominin_id.html; 
http://encarta.msn.com; 
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/glosfn.htm; and so on. - 133.1.171.228
Google searching shows me that there is variety in the usage. Most scientific literature will note how each term is used and why. I have done so here. Also, please sign your comments with ~~~~ - UtherSRG 12:17, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
I am not the anon who keeps changing things, but this is my understanding, as an amateur who reads about this stuff, of the terms conventionally used these days in English:
TaxonNounAdjective
Hominoideahominoidhominoid
Hominidaehominidhominid
Homininaehomininehominine
Homininihomininhominin
I have never seen "hominide" in an English-language text, by the way. Take a look in Google, in the first five or six pages of results I don't see anything in English for hominide, maybe I'm missing something. --Cam 20:43, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
The thing is that *all* -idae ending taxa use -id and -ide, and *all* -inae ending taxa use -in and -ine. Some authors use the adjectival form as a noun, because in English that's also proper grammar. (Think: There's many blue and red balls. Get me a blue.) - UtherSRG 22:13, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
*I maintain that the ending "-ide" is not used by English-speaking biologists in relation to naming -idae. --Cam 15:45, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
I edited the article with a link to the National Geographic Style Manual (see their entry on "hominid, hominin"). If you change it back please cite an English-language source which explicitly states that "hominin" means a member of Homininae. (I know of course that any species in Hominini is automatically in Homininae. What I am looking for is a cite showing that "hominin" can mean anything in Homininae and not just in Hominini.) --Cam 16:00, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
:It's a matter of what taxa are used. Before Hominini was used at all, then my original usage applies. "Hominin" didn't come into usage at the time of introducing Hominini, but it did when Homininae was used. With the exception of this article Hominini isn't used. (Groves doesn't use Hominini, and our taxonomy is following his work.) Googling for "hominin" gives mixed results for its use, and when Hominini isn't used, "hominin" refers to Homininae. - UtherSRG 16:36, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
::Sorry about the edit war this morning. I was pretty convinced by that National Geographic link, and by some other reading I did last night and today, that the terms in that paragraph are the standard ones used. And they appear to be independent of what one puts in the taxa. That is, whatever you decide to put in Homininae, it's called a hominine. We could decide to put orangutans in there, then they'd be hominines. Similarly with Hominidae/hominid, Hominini/hominin etc. Whatever you put in those groups, they get called by the corresponding term. --Cam 04:21, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
:::Leave it to the rigors of classification junkies to throw English gramar to the wind. ;) Ah well. No harm, no fowl. - UtherSRG 04:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that "hominid" and "hominin" are in flux in the professional literature at the moment because of changes in our understanding of the great ape family tree.  The latest word from our primatologist (I'm an anthropology grad student at Florida State) is that hominin is commonly accepted as a term for H. sapiens and all ancestors since the Pan/Homo speciation event.  A review of recent articles from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology shows precisely this trend.  Thus, hominin would include Homo sp., Australopithecus sp., Paranthropus sp., and whatever your other prefered post-Pan human ancestor taxa are.  "Hominid" is being avoided at the moment because of the confusion, but properly refers to (for living taxa) H. sapiens, Pan sp., Gorilla sp., and possibly Pongo sp.  Some primatologists include Pongo sp. in Hominidae, some retain Pongidae for Pongo sp. alone.
I didn't make the edit myself because clearly this is a contentious topic, and I'm an archaeologist, not a primatologist, but that's the 2 cents from the anthropological community.- suncrush
:It's all hogwash catagorization anyway. We know that genetically H. sapiens sapiens are closely related enough to P. paniscus to be considered two races in the same species. (Of course, this hasn't been confirmed by generating viable offspring.) The addition of the Tribe Hominin is simple an effort to keep those who don't understand genetics from rioting and taking away our grant money. ~grumble grumble~ --Dustin Asby 23:48, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems likely to be an exaggeration, alternatively it is very interesting.  There are rumours of attempts to hybridise, the more systematic ones made by sapiens.  Midgley 02:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Wrong. Pan is more closely related to Homo than it is to Gorilla. Putting Pan in Gorillini would say just the oppostie, that Pan is more closely related to Gorilla. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are wrong. This is NOT a forum for a general discussion of the topic. I shouldn't post this, but I am always amazed at the ability of someone with virtually no knowledge of the subject to HAVE an opinion on the subject. It is human nature, it seems. OTOH, the fossil evidence in human ancestry is almost non-existent. Almost but not quite. You comment about "striking difference", which is meaningless as far as I can see. The similarities between us and the other homininae are what is "striking".  The relationship between physiology and dna is well established, but the relationship between ecological niche and dna is only "weak" at best. (some snakes live in trees, for example). The fact that we share so many similarities between our ~20,000 genes and a gorilla's would not be obvious just because of our general size, shape, habitat, and diet.  The similarities are extremely implausible as coincidence, rather they must have a cause, we think. The theory of evolution and the fossil record give us a plausible (if not yet complete) explanation: We are very closely related to them. Again, OTOH, be very cautious of anyone spouting percentage dna sharing/similarity numbers. These numbers are not absolute (in fact, there is no single "standard method" to determine them, let alone an absolute method).  Mixing and matching these numbers will lead you astray. (See Uther's nonsense below). (look at any one % as a single question on a test; it takes many questions to determine the actual "correct" score.)Abitslow (talk) 19:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

text: Um... have you read any of the related articles? Humans and chimps are more closely related to each other (sharing 95-98% of our DNA) than chimps are to gorillas. Gorillas and humans also share a large percentage of the genome, at about 93-96%. It doesn't take an expert to read the chimpanzee and gorilla articles. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminology 

message: This term already redirects to this article and I can see it listed as referring to Homininae (perhaps because it has an 'e' at the end?) so I added it in bold as an alt term like corresponding articles do. Y12J (talk) 23:55, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Hominine]]

message: It seems frivolous to refer to humans by their scientific name in the introduction whilst gorillas and chimpanzees both are not. I've changed it, but I know how things like that can be blown out of proportion on Wp, so in an effort to avoid a possible edit war any discrepancies in opinion can be discussed here. 122.106.203.169 (talk) 10:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not a problem. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Humans rather than Homo sapiens 

message: Early into this article, reference to Pongidae occurs.  Clicking on the link informs me that Pongidae is OBSOLETE.  In other words the basic structure of this article is 'wrong' (no longer current thinking, current fashion). I also note that several graphics also are, therefore, obsolete (or contentious/misleading). I note that this may be Wikipedia's downfall - that articles once written tend NOT to change with the times (original authors are probably not willing to admit that time has moved on, or are not willing to invest the substantial effort and time to keep article current). Call it "information inertia". Its real. (sure to some extent it is fashion, but on the other hand, even if every 'improvement' might someday be reverted, it is not a reason to think progress can't/shouldn't  be made.) <B>This article needs a rewrite,</B> imho.  (Even if it is simply to say that new evidence has cast doubt (or new analysis of old evidence), and there are now several alternatives each having strong and weak points. The amazingly sparse evidence from which hypotheses are made and facts "concluded" astounds me. To call any of it "established" science is ridiculous. It may be the best evidence we have, but if tomorrow 75 anatomically modern human fossils are found dating from 500,000 to 670,000 years ago (with suitable verification and validation), then we'll toss almost all of the current ideas out the window. Constrast this to the 'hard sciences' where, e.g., quantum mechanics did not (could not) refute acid/base theory.Abitslow (talk) 18:03, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolete - needs a rewrite 

message: There is an RFC that may affect this page at WikiProject Tree of Life. The topic is Confusion over taxonomy of subtribe Panina and taxon homininae (are chimps hominins)?
Please feel free to comment there. SPACKlick (talk) 16:38, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  There is an RFC that may affect this page