Talk:Homininae

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Terminology

To the anon who keeps changing the terminology:

Taxon	Noun	Adjective
Hominoidea	hominoid	hominoidal
Hominidae	hominid	hominide
Homininae	hominin	hominine
Hominini	none

These are the definitions we are using. Scientists mix and match, depending usually on when they started using the various terms. "Hominoid" used to mean what "hominid" now means. "Hominin" used ot mean what "hominid" now means. These terms have shifted meaning as our understanding of the taxonomic relationships have changed. See ape for the history of this understanding. Perhaps we can work on how to put this explanation into an article. - UtherSRG

Note that there is another terminology, in which the term "hominin" refers to Tribe hominini and the term "hominine" refers to Subfamily homininae. See the resource below for more information.
YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 41:93-136 (1998) (available at http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/X-PDF/Potts98.pdf; http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Hominoids.html; http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1204_hominin_id.html; http://encarta.msn.com; http://www.ecotao.com/holism/glosfn.htm; and so on. - 133.1.171.228

Google searching shows me that there is variety in the usage. Most scientific literature will note how each term is used and why. I have done so here. Also, please sign your comments with ~~~~ - UtherSRG 12:17, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

I am not the anon who keeps changing things, but this is my understanding, as an amateur who reads about this stuff, of the terms conventionally used these days in English:

Taxon	Noun	Adjective
Hominoidea	hominoid	hominoid
Hominidae	hominid	hominid
Homininae	hominine	hominine
Hominini	hominin	hominin

I have never seen "hominide" in an English-language text, by the way. Take a look in Google, in the first five or six pages of results I don't see anything in English for hominide, maybe I'm missing something. --Cam 20:43, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that *all* -idae ending taxa use -id and -ide, and *all* -inae ending taxa use -in and -ine. Some authors use th adjectival form as a noun, because in English that's also proper grammar. (Think: There's many blue and red balls. Get me a blue.) - UtherSRG 22:13, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

• I maintain that the ending "-ide" is not used by English-speaking biologists in relation to naming -idae. --Cam 15:45, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I edited the article with a link to the National Geographic Style Manual (see their entry on "hominid, hominin"). If you change it back please cite an English-language source which explicitly states that "hominin" means a member of Homininae. (I know of course that any species in Hominini is automatically in Homininae. What I am looking for is a cite showing that "hominin" can mean anything in Homininae and not just in Hominini.) --Cam 16:00, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

It's a matter of what taxa are used. Before Hominini was used at all, then my original usage applies. "Hominin" didn't come into usage at the time of introducing Hominini, but it did when Homininae was used. With the exception of this article Hominini isn't used. (Groves doesn't use Hominini, and our taxonomy is following his work.) Googling for "hominin" gives mixed results for its use, and when Hominini isn't used, "hominin" refers to Homininae. - UtherSRG 16:36, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the edit war this morning. I was pretty convinced by that National Geographic link, and by some other reading I did last night and today, that the terms in that paragraph are the standard ones used. And they appear to be independent of what one puts in the taxa. That is, whatever you decide to put in Homininae, it's called a hominine. We could decide to put orangutans in there, then they'd be hominines. Similarly with Hominidae/hominid, Hominini/hominin etc. Whatever you put in those groups, they get called by the corresponding term. --Cam 04:21, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Leave it to the rigors of classification junkies to throw English gramar to the wind. ;) Ah well. No harm, no fowl. - UtherSRG 04:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that "hominid" and "hominin" are in flux in the professional literature at the moment because of changes in our understanding of the great ape family tree. The latest word from our primatologist (I'm an anthropology grad student at Florida State) is that hominin is commonly accepted as a term for H. sapiens and all ancestors since the Pan/Homo speciation event. A review of recent articles from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology shows precisely this trend. Thus, hominin would include Homo sp., Australopithecus sp., Paranthropus sp., and whatever your other prefered post-Pan human ancestor taxa are. "Hominid" is being avoided at the moment because of the confusion, but properly refers to (for living taxa) H. sapiens, Pan sp., Gorilla sp., and possibly Pongo sp. Some primatologists include Pongo sp. in Hominidae, some retain Pongidae for Pongo sp. alone.

I didn't make the edit myself because clearly this is a contentious topic, and I'm an archaeologist, not a primatologist, but that's the 2 cents from the anthropological community.- suncrush