Overheard on the interwebs. Hmmm...
>>>Palaeoanthropologists are famously resistant to the use of computer-assisted phylogenetics… nevertheless, there are at least few published cladograms within the field. This tree (from Ni et al. (2021), on the Harbin hominin lineage) shows how H. erectus is outside the clade that includes heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and moderns.
>>>What’s also notable here is that the lineages conventionally included within H. erectus form a paraphyletic group. We can agree that that group is a species if we want (and most researchers do want to maintain that view), but it means that some erectines, if you will, are phylogenetically closer to the heidelbergensis + Neanderthal + modern clade than are others.
More below. It seems paleontology is a, shall we say, slightly colorful activity!
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