Page 174 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

who has studied KNM-ER 1470 at least as much as Leakey, maintains
that this creature should not be included with such human species as
Homo erectus or H. rudolfensis, but rather in the Australopithecus genus. 158
In short, classifications such as H. habilis or H. rudolfensis, which are
sought to be portrayed as a transitional form between Australopithecus

and H. erectus, are purely imaginary. As most researchers now accept,
these creatures are all members of the Australopithecus genus. All their
anatomical features indicate that these creatures were all species of ape.
This fact was made even clearer by the evolutionary anthropolo-
gists Bernard Wood and Mark Collard in their study published in
Science magazine in 1999. They declared that Homo habilis and H.
rudolfensis (the skull 1470 species) categories were imaginary, and that
the fossils included in these categories needed to be studied within the
genus Australopithecus:
More recently, fossil species have been assigned to Homo on the basis of ab-
solute brain size, inferences about language ability and hand function, and
retrodictions about their ability to fashion stone tools. With only a few excep-
tions (1, 2), the definition and use of the genus within human evolution, and

The skulls portrayed as transitional forms constitute a to-
tally imaginary classification.

Homo habilis skull A reconstruction of Homo rudolfensis

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