Paranthropus: Where do things stand?

Abstract

In 1960 John Robinson suggested that the newly defined species Zinjanthropus boisei should be transferred to the genus Paranthropus Paranthropus (Broom 1938) as Paranthropus boisei (Leakey 1959). Since then fossil evidence of two hyper-megadont early hominin taxa has come to light. One of these taxa, Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus (Arambourg and Coppens 1968), has been added to the Paranthropus genus, whereas the second taxon, Australopithecus garhi (Asfaw et al. 1999), has been included in a different taxon, Australopithecus. This contribution will tease out why different alpha-taxonomic decisions were made about the generic affinities of Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus and Australopithecus garhi. It will also review the types of data that are now available for generating and testing hypotheses about the relationships of megadont and hyper-megadont hominins. On the basis of this review, in this paper we will suggest a hypothesis, or hypotheses, that are most consistent with the current fossil and contextual data from East and southern Africa.