THE PROBLEM OF HOMINOID SYSTEMATICS, AND SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR SOLVINGIT

Molecular studies disagree with Simpson's classification of the Homino idea, giving to each taxon of the former superfamily lower and lower r anks. Goodman et al.'s latest proposal gives to the human clade the ra nk of just a subgenus of the genus Homo. The designation of rank is ar rived at (i) as a result of an arbitrary choice; (ii) as an ontologica l condition. In the second case, adaptive ability may be a criterion t o identify real higher taxa and give us a tool to keep the rank of fam ily to classify the human clade (as well as the orang-utan, gorilla an d chimpanzee clades).