Read the original article. It is interesting!
These are some of the best researchers in the business, and this is important research.
If you read it, you won't easily wave it away with some inane quip, as we often see on these threads.
But... coyote IS a trickster!
The ape interpretation could mean that Sahelanthropus was uniquely ancestral to a living ape, or that the species was an extinct related lineage that diverged before the hominids, or that it is close to or actually the last common ancestor of hominids and chimpanzees. If any of the alternative phylogenies is correct, the description of “ape” would be valid. The common ancestor of Homo and any ape species is traditionally and currently described as an ape.Did everyone catch Le Gros Clark in 1934 noting that "The Controversy" in real science was over in his day? And what the authors are saying is that tchadensis is not a "hominid" but an "ape" if it diverged to soon or is itself the last common ancestor.
That man is derived from a form which … can be properly called an ‘anthropoid ape’ is a statement which no longer admits doubt (Le Gros Clark, 1934).Today … we recognize … that the last common ancestor of apes and hominins was a great ape but not necessarily like any particular modern species (Ward, 2003, p. 75).
Another point which should emerge very clearly from the discussion in that link: it is very, very hard to tell a "hominid" from an "ape" in the late Miocene. Why in heck should that be?
Keith Miller explains it well:
The character states used to define higher taxa are determined retrospectively. That is, they are chosen based on a knowledge of the subsequent history of the lineages possessing those traits. They do not reflect the attainment of some objective higher level of morphologic innovation at the time of their appearance. Also, all the features subsequently identified with a particular higher taxon do not appear in a coordinated and simultaneous manner but as character mosaics within numerous closely-related species lineages, many of which are not included in the new higher taxon. In addition, as discussed above, the species associated with the origin and initial radiation of a new taxon are usually not very divergent in morphology. Were it not for the subsequent evolutionary history of the lineages, species spanning the transitions between families, orders, classes, and phyla would be placed in the same lower taxon (Fig. 3).Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record .Based on the above discussion, a transitional form is simply a fossil species that possesses a morphology intermediate between that of two others belonging to different higher taxa. Such transitional forms commonly possess a mixture of traits considered characteristic of these different higher taxa. They may also possess particular characters that are themselves in an intermediate state. During the time of origin of a new higher taxon, there are often many described species with transitional morphologies representing many independent lineages. It is usually very difficult if not impossible to determine which, if any, of the known transitional forms actually lay on the lineage directly ancestral to the new taxon. For this reason, taxonomists commonly have difficulty defining higher taxa, and assigning transitional fossil species to one or the other taxon. But, although the details may elude us, the patterns of evolutionary change are in many cases well recorded in the fossil record.
When you run evolutionary divergence backwards, you see convergence. The farther back you go, the more unlike things look like each other until you don't know what silly "created kind" bin to put things in. That's what evolution says you should see. That's what you do see.
Great link!
Thanks for finding the article.