Figure 9. Orthogonal views of 3D MDS results for simple matching (left) and Jaccard distances (right) calculated from postcranial characters. Au. sediba is indicated by a symbol with a black outline. other cluster. For three-cluster medoid partitioning, the clusters corresponded to all Homo taxa, all three Australopithecus taxa, and the remaining taxa. Four-cluster medoid partitioning divided up the Homo taxa and established a new cluster of Homo and Au. sediba. Fuzzy analysis generated hard partitions for two clusters that evenly divided the taxa, placing all Australopithecus taxa and Homo floresiensis in the same cluster with chimpanzee, gorilla, and Ardipithecus. The other cluster contained the remaining Homo taxa. The same two clusters were observed with both simple matching and Jaccard distances. For three clusters, fuzzy analysis broke up the Homo taxa to make a cluster of H. floresiensis, H. naledi, H. habilis, and all three Australopithecus taxa for simple matching distances and a cluster of H. habilis, H. naledi, H. floresiensis, and Au. sediba for Jaccard distances. For both distance metrics, three-cluster fuzzy analysis recognized a cluster of H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. erectus s.l., and H. georgicus. Distinguishing which clustering partition was best was difficult because the average silhouette widths for all medoid and fuzzy partitions were similar, ranging from 0.19 to 0.33. The 3D MDS results differed from the craniodental MDS results (Figure 9). Most importantly, the Homo taxa are spread out more with postcranial characters than with craniodental characters. The dispersed Homo taxa can be observed with both simple matching and Jaccard distances. The second major difference is the position of Au. sediba. With craniodental characters, Au. sediba appears in the midst of the Homo taxa, but with postcranial characters, Au. sediba appears to be merely adjacent to the Homo taxa and just as close to other Australopithecus taxa as it is to the nearest Homo taxa. Otherwise, the chimpanzee, gorilla, and Ardipithecus appear to be closely adjacent to each other and distant from the Homo taxa. Australopithecus afarensis and Au. africanus s.l. also appear to be distant from the Homo taxa. Combined character matrix. The combined character matrix of craniodental and postcranial data contains 482 characters, 49.6% of which are postcranial characters and 50.4% of which are craniodental characters. Of the 6,784 possible character states, 4,763 are scored, making the matrix 70.6% complete. Character relevance ranges from 0.214 to 1, with a median of 0.714. Taxic relevance ranges from 0.259 (Ar. ramidus) to 0.985 (H. sapiens), with a median of 0.743 (Table 1). Only two taxa have taxic relevance less than 0.4, Ar. ramidus and H. georgicus. Distance correlation results show a clear cluster of Homo taxa with both correlation types and distance metrics, but individual distance correlations vary considerably between the Pearson and Spearman correlations (Figure 10). With Pearson correlations, H. georgicus shares significant, positive distance correlation with no other taxa and significant, negative correlation with both chimpanzee and gorilla. Using simple matching distances, H. floresiensis shares significant, positive distance correlation only with H. habilis and H. erectus s.l. Using Jaccard distances, H. floresiensis shares significant, positive distance correlation only with H. erectus s.l. With simple matching and Jaccard distances, Au. sediba shares significant, positive distance correlation only with Homo naledi. Using Spearman correlations, H. georgicus shares significant, positive distance correlation with all other Homo taxa, and Au. sediba shares significant, positive distance correlation with five Homo taxa, including H. sapiens. These patterns WOOD AND BRUMMEL Hominin Baraminology Reconsidered 2023 ICC 260
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