The human species is very complex. Individuals have a phenotype specific to themselves. With all the variety within the inhibitors of the Earth, the direction of evolution will continue to change and the species 10,000 years from now will have similar difficulty in specifying us that is Homo sapiens sapiens. In modern day however, the main question paleoanthropologists face is: “how much variation is needed to declare a fossil a new species?”(Rowe 2015). This is a rather broad question that is very complex and can be problematic within the scientific community. However, paleoanthropologists generally take into careful account characteristics of skeletal morphology, the study of speciation, and genetics at different ratios to provide a deep, …show more content…
The problematic debate that has taken over the scientific field of paleoanthropology is the adverse viewpoints between Splitter vs. Lumpers. Splitters tend to believe that less intraspecific variation is needed to declare a fossil a separate species. This relatively means that it is going to be linear and will be a very complex representation of the phylogenetic tree. Lumpers on the other hand suggest that more intraspecific variation is needed to declare a fossil a separate species. This view tends to provide a more broad, clustered depiction of the phylogenetic tree. The classification of species is always going to be different in some aspects, but the underlying consensus is the idea of biological significance. Paleoanthropologists will use interspecific …show more content…
Anthropology sees that anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa but eventually spread out. The Replacement Model is exactly what happened to the Homo erectus species. With regards to this idea, its species can be found within assorted parts of the world including China, Africa, and Eurasia. Homo ergaster is the oldest species to indicate human-like body proportions and features. It’s new classified species, Homo erectus, has very similar adaptations such as the loss of having an arboreal adaption yet receiving the ability to walk. The altercations due to adapting to the geographical isolation subjects a previous species to speciation, however, paleoanthropologists think otherwise in Homo ergaster’s case. The difference in bone density and distressed suborbital ridge of ergaster, depicts how derived this species became due to adaptation to various niches in Africa (Lewis 245). In regards to these anatomical differences, researchers found too little variation to indicate a new