IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Groves, C.P. | |
| How old are subspecies? A tiger's eye-view of human evolution | |
| 1992 Pers.Hum.Biol.2/Archaeol.Oceania (27): 153-160 | |
'Replacement' and 'Regional Continuity' models of _Homo sapiens _evolution are still subject to lively debate, but the human case has been discussed without reference to what happens in other animals. It happens that some large mammal species have fossil records that are good enough to permit, to some degree, the history of their subspeciation and of their mode of origin. With one rather dubious exception, there is no case of Regional Continuity. Some can be demonstrated to originate from their parent species and then subspeciate; subspecies may evolve and continue in situ, or there may be a complicated pattern of intraspecies replacements. Many of the species concerned are rare or endangered, and have been subject to genetic studies directed towards captive management. Genetic distances tend to correlate poorly with known or inferred fossil information; except for the White Rhinoceros the separation time of the two living subspecies as calculated from mtDNA is consistent with the fossil record. The implications of this for human evolution are discussed. |
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