Concept Review: A Plethora of Bigfeet

Dear Constant Readers,

It seems perhaps Heuvelmans was right after all and the great days of Zoology are not done. I strongly urge anybody even remotely interested in wildlife to read these Darren Naish posts (Parts I, II, III and IV) and visit Marc van Roosmalen's website.

So why should I mention this before a mystery primate post? First it should be noted that none of these animals has had any Cryptozoological interest whatsoever except for minor mentions of the new big cat. All of these animals also have fairly close living relatives, hinting that perhaps some will turn out to be subspecies/regional variation. Regardless, this really has to be one of the most spectacular things I've ever heard of happening in the world of Zoology. It gives hope for the discovery of new species...but I don't feel it helps support the case of "cryptids" and traditional Cryptozoology.

If a large species of hominid was discovered living in Western North America it would probably be even more spectacular than the amazing work of van Roosmalen. They would be perhaps one of (if not the) largest primates ever to live, would be among the largest animals on the continent (up to brown bear sized), require a significant ghost lineage and range extension for hominids, and given how close it lives to humans...imply them to be one of the smartest and most intentionally cryptic animals ever. Notice how there are no potential local relatives (unless they're H. sapiens derivatives) and there is a great deal of Cryptozoological attention in a flip of the situation with van Roosmalen's. They also hasn't been discovered.

Now, how is one to react to the notion that there is not just one species wandering around, but a plethora of them? Perhaps in the more naive 50's and 60's Sanderson's, Heuvelmans' and others' theorizing about four or so species (Heuvelmans wasn't clear) could be conceivable, but in this modern day...in places like North America? Incredibly, it has been proposed about a decade ago by Cryptozoologists that there are no fewer than nine "classes" of moderately large to outrageously large primates. It should be noted that these artificial "classes" appear to hold multiple species apiece, implying that there could be dozens of separate species. This is an order of magnitude more spectacular than van Roosmalen's work and I personally think most of it is an outright fantasy.

Most. There still is a chance that a few of the more reasonably sized and isolated types could be discovered. Regardless of my opinion on the matter, I still think that the subject matter deserves a fair and critical treatment. I'm not a cynical rejectionist, I'm a skeptic...our language does not differentiate between the two but they are quite distinct. Those masquerading as "skeptics" are often as close-minded and unscientific as those with blind faith. There's always a ray of hope, even if it is increasingly slim.

Oh yes, I should have mentioned by now that the books that I will covering are The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe (Avon Books, New York, 1999) and The Yeti, Bigfoot & True Giants Revised Edition by Mark A. Hall (Mark A. Hall Publications, Minneapolis, 1997). There was another edition of Hall's book in 2005 as well as another book called Living Fossils on the more "human" of the hominids which I could not find due to rarity. Coleman and Huyghe's book covers the same subject regardless, so it shouldn't hinder me reviewing the subject. According to this website, Hall and Coleman will be publishing more books on this subject in the near future, so I'll probably create an addendum (probably a separate post) to this when I can read them.

As I have not even started discussing the nine types yet, this post will certainly become one of the most outrageously long I've ever written. For those of you brave enough here is the alleged classification of unknown anthropoids, this Plethora of Bigfeet:



Neo-Giants

This is the "sasquatch" of popular conceptualization (Cryptozoological and otherwise): a big hairy biped living in the Pacific Northwest. This "class" also extends down the Andes mountains and the Himalayas of Central Asia, implying one to three closely related species. It appears that most of the description of this "class" is taken from familiar sasquatch. These cryptids range from 6 to 9 feet tall and have pronounced sexual dimorphism although both genders are hugely robust and have a pronounced sagittal crest. They also have prognathous jaws, a heavy brow-ridge, and small round eyes. In other words, these look like big bipedal gorillas. The authors theorize the creatures are nocturnal and lean heavily towards herbivory. The estimated weight for the 6-7 foot tall Patterson-Gimlin film subject at 5-700 pounds implies the big 9-foot males weigh roughly 1500 or more pounds. The footprints are huge human-like tracks apparently averaging 16 inches, but allegedly reach 20 inches long by 9 inches wide. There is a distinctive "split ball" feature and the toes are similarly sized.

Due to the cube law, larger animals tend to need more muscle attachment area, so a sagittal crest on a huge primate is not a surprise (think chimpanzees vs. gorillas). The authors unconvincingly theorize that the animals are from the hominid genus Paranthropus, which are comparatively tiny (up to ~4'7" and 110 lbs) African creatures that did have sagittal crests in both genders. Hall explicitly connects Meganthropus to this creature as he thinks it is a "highly developed primate some 8 feet tall" and a Southeast Asian representation of robust Australopithecines. Coleman/Huyghe explicitly state that Meganthropus is Paranthropus, implying a connection. As Constant Readers may recall, the idea of Meganthropus as Paranthropus is a minority view to say the least, all the recent research implies this to be some sort of "giant" Homo erectus-like creature. I say "giant" because height estimates are not possible without post-cranial fossils and "Meganthropus" could very well just be an outrageously robust erectine of normal height. The cherry-picking of facts (often decades outdated) and selection of dubious morphological traits is typical fare for these books.

Gargantuan though these primates may be, the sasquatch creature's evidence is at least fairly respectable. Even though this discovery is still improbable and would be incredibly spectacular, it appears to be one of the most probable of the mystery primates. As for reports in other locations, their connection to this class appears due to size and the robust physique. I have not heard of the distinctive "double ball" footprint turning up in these locations, and I am not quite convinced that these cryptids belong to this class. Well, I'm not convinced the idea of a "class" is a very good idea at all frankly.



True Giants

By comparison, this "class" makes the Neo-Giants look all but certain. Unlike the last type, reports are sparse and occur over a huge area: most of North America, NW South America, Siberia, Central and SE Asia, Central and NE Africa, Northern Australia (!), and apparently...South Central Greenland (!?!?). It apparently formerly lived in Europe as well. The feet have four toes, are quite symmetrical and measure 21 by 10 inches "or larger". The implied maximum height given by the authors is...20 feet tall. 20 feet tall. 20 feet tall! This is simply outrageous in light that the tallest giraffe was 19.2 feet tall. Hall makes matters worse by discussing a vast three-toed track 22 by 40 inches long which he believed possibly belonged to a 27-footer. Due to a posture change in Brachiosaurids, it appears that Sauroposeidon was "only" around 10 meters/33 feet tall. This is a living King Kong that rivals the tallest dinosaurs for height. Unlike Kong though, these animals are depicted as being apparently "lean" even with a coat of fur and are prone to "wobbly" movements. Thanks to the cube law again, if you're going to get bigger and try and preserve some of your muscular strength, you're going to have to get more robust and not leaner. Even at the apparently more "normal" 12 feet or so for this "class", I'm significantly doubting how well it would be able to function. I have the feeling that most of the apparent size of this class would be due to exaggeration, of course assuming it is based on anything at all. But don't worry, this "class" gets weirder.

The authors all connect this "class" to the fossil primate Gigantopithecus which is classified as a Sivapithecine ape. Though most reconstructions dubiously portray it as a super-Gorilla; judging by its close relation to the orangutan and quite orangutan-like Sivapithecus it should have reasonably looked like a beefed up ground-dwelling orangutan. You can find out more about this spectacular genus here. According to Grover Krantz, who believed that the sasquatch/"neo giant" was Gigantopithecus, the parabolic shape of the jaw indicated a foramen magnum underneath the skull which indicates bipedalism. You can see the jaw isn't that parabolic and I do not find it convincing that the jaw couldn't have acquired that (slight) shape through some other pressure. The Coleman/Huyghe book oddly states that the most recent work by "some scientists" indicates a biped upwards of 10 feet tall. Implying that this isn't an extreme minority viewpoint is deceptive to say the least, and further indication of the rampant fact cherry-picking. Their whole case is based on size, another poor morphological character.

Despite the link with Giganto, the "true giant" is portrayed as an exceedingly human-like creature with a flat face, long head hair, occasional tool use (e.g. clubs, drums?!), occasional clothing use, and perhaps a primitive form of language. Hall theorizes that these may be some sort of human imitators (convergent evolution implied?) that eventually fought with us, became estranged, and then wound up as the degenerate wanderers we have left today. This is a pretty good idea for a science fiction novel and I am considering stealing it. The universal folklore of giants (and little people, dragons, deities et cetera) is indeed an interesting one, but I do not find the giant human imitator hypothesis to be plausible in this reality. There sure as heck isn't any hard evidence for it, but Hall seems convinced that there is a Vast Scientific Conspiracy Against The Noble Lone Researcher keeping him from proving his case...rather than considering that he could be wrong.

Hall states many vague folklore mentions of giants to support his case, and Coleman/Huyghe unfortunately put one of these into the book. Tolkien would surely cringe at the notion that Grendel from Beowulf was a representation of a "true giant"! There isn't much of a physical description given, and the authors use "matted, reed-covered hair" as the "distinguishing characteristic". Why the hell does this need to be presented as a field guide anyways? Given that the poem had a long oral history, using it as "evidence" of any kind for an unknown animal is a joke. Is this the best that they could do? Is this "field guide" worthy? I personally like the idea that Grendel is a berserker (beats the occasional Creationist opinion of a Tyrannosaurus, yeesh), but the authors act as if their answer is the only one. There is very little critical thought in either of these books at all, and it would be folly to try and point out every example.

Coleman and Hall are coming out with a "true giant" book which I hope is a vast improvement on this very preliminary and sketchy research. I am genuinely interested by those bizarre four-toed tracks appearing in Asia and America (the Australian reports curiously mention footprint but not toe count, hmmmm) but I remain much more skeptical to this than the "neo giant" and most of the other types presented...and that's really saying something. I'm convinced that nobody will find a "true giant" fossil or otherwise, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong.



Marked Hominids

This is the smallest of the "bigfeet" which stands 6.5 to 7 feet tall. Mark A. Hall reached into the realm of hyper obscure archeology to select the Gardarene skull, daringly named Homo gardarensis, as the candidate for this type. It was found in a 12th century Viking graveyard in Greenland; and while the reconstruction is low vaulted, that lower jaw looks suspiciously similar to our own as opposed to the H. heidelbergensis shape. Hall's illustration only compared it to the Mauer mandible, not the most convincing method. It was examined by four studies later on which found it to be acromegalic H. sapiens, but since there was a trend at the time to dismiss some non H. sapiens hominids as pathological perhaps the fragments should at least be re-examined. I'm not suggesting that it is anything but our species, but it should at least be interesting to look at. The authors claim that this species is in fact a survivor of the "giant European man Homo heidelbergensis" (apparently = H. gardarensis) which while tall at 1.8 meters ~ 6 feet average is only as tall as a normal Dutch person whom I personally would not regard as "giants".

Tales of the Tornit by the Inuit are attributed to this "class", and while they are described as long limbed (from an Inuit perspective) and very strong. The burden of evidence is on the authors to try and convince me that this is not a member of our species, but a near-human. Hall equates tales of the Tornit with Dorset culture (which may be right) and essentially claims that what archaeologists assumed was a pre-Inuit culture was in fact a separate species! It is quite possible that the Dorset culture survived until as recently as 1902, in which case I find it quite hard to believe that they were "trolls" and not real people. He also claimed that they wore high collars in order to enhance hearing like giant amplifiers. Hmm.

While Hall's...interesting...website mostly covers this "class" in the past, the field guide gives us a view of the modern reports. These are the most human looking of the bigfeet according to the field guide's description, but the illustrations confusingly portray them as having an ape-like head and massive upper body with super-long (~4 feet) arms. An eyewitness-based drawing (not in the book) of the Mecheny sighting does seem to show a rather ape-ish hominid as well, so this isn't artistic licence. Everything derived from H. ergaster/erectus (including us) essentially seemed to have basic body plan. The authors also attribute strange narrow, long, curved footprints to this "class" despite the fact that Homo heidelbergensis footprints are known and they look nothing like them. So basically it looks like once again the identity has once again been chosen from a few not-too-diagnostic traits.

That aside, this type is supposed to be seen from the high Arctic of Baffin Island, coastal Greenland, Novaya Zemlya, Iceland (?!?!), and Northern Europe down until the temperate and near-subtropics of Asia and North America. Perhaps due to the generic appearance the authors are not certain if it exists globally or not. And that is just the problem with the "class", it is so instinctive looking! The field guide differentiates it due to its (alleged) frequent lighter patches of hair coloration, which is also not a very convincing trait. This just seems to be another tall hairy person which either resembles the other types or humans whose primitive living conditions have been exaggerated. Well there's the MoMo which strongly resembles a person in a ghillie suit.



An Early Conclusion

This really demonstrates the problems with classification systems. Reading through reports there just isn't that much diagnostic said about these creatures other than they are big, man-like, and hairy. I get the impression that the authors have chosen a few unusally detailed sightings and have made a classification system around them, much as Heuvelmans appears to have done in his sea-serpent classification. I have the feeling that this classification system is not splitting, but is in fact lumping together potentially different phenomenon under the same unnatural "class" label. The "field guide" classification system in conjunction with the "class" system just causes confusion. Are the three North American "Marked Hominids" variation, separate species, or something else? It just isn't very well explained or really necessary.

So what should be done? I feel bad criticizing without trying to be constructive. If the authors are to tackle this subject again, they need to stop comparing these sightings to fossils. Seriously, the connections are extremely tenuous and the "facts" stated are poorly researched and look very unprofessional. Perhaps instead of relying so much on the "class" system, the different phenomenon can be looked at in their respective hot-spots. After then attempts to connect the classes could be made, but they'd have to be tenous. The field guide format would have to be dropped and many more interesting and synergetic sample sightings can be used other than rambling samplings. Not showing one's work is not exactly the most convincing method. At the end of the field guide, the authors give their "best bets" for which ones are real, and they are logical selections. Why not focus on these probabilities and treat the anomalous reports of 20-foot tall pointy eared monsters as what they are...curiousities.

Perhaps if there really is something out there and Cryptozoologists use more professional methods like van Roosmalen's, something may actually get accomplished.

If I were to guess now, I'd say its all a load of bullocks...but there is still that nagging single photon of hope.


-Cameron



P.S.

Yes, this post did get a bit too long and I did indeed conclude a little early. That's the problem with these posts, the stream-of-conciousness format can be a bit unpredictable. If there is some interest in the other types, I'd be glad to write on them too even after the conclusion. Well, even if there isn't I may do it anyways.



P.P.S.

Due to my hatred of Old Man Copyright and my love of illustrations, I have decided to quickly sketch out my own versions of the above three types. Well actually not that quickly, hair is a real pain in the butt to draw. I can draw better (so he says...) but if anybody wants to use this image consider it in the public domain. I felt oddly compelled to write "Merry Christmas" on this for some reason, but I'm not sure why. All the beards, myself half included?

Meganthropus At Last!

Dear Constant Readers,

Where I last left off you heard me talking about the occasional appearances of Meganthropus in some less-than-plausible material. You heard Meganthropus was a synonym for Biblical giants, builders of gigantic stone tools in Australia, a colossal 7-12 foot erectine, and a wayward and presumed gigantic Paranthropus/Australopithecine closely related to Bigfoot and Yeti tales. While there is hardly ever anything written about Meganthropus in popular literature there has been a surprisingly large amount of discussion about it in technical literature. And while there were some articles written in past decades, what I'm mostly going to be concerned about is the discussion this decade. Given that the material is often very technical in nature and I am not a trained Paleoanthropologist, I can't pretend that this post will be anything more than an introduction. Hopefully if there are those you of very interested in this subject, you can use this as a jumping board into the dark and scary world of Paleoanthropology.

Here is a complete list of the fossils that have been affiliated with Meganthropus:



Sangiran 5 / Sangiran 1939
Pithecanthropus dubius, Homo erectus, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus (?), Pongo sp.

This fossil fragment has not normally been associated with Meganthropus, although some have entertained the notion due to its fairly large size. Kaifu et al in their 2005 paper on fossil mandibles from Java compare it to other robust mandibles, but another recent paper by Tyler in 2004 (which they did not cite) demonstrates numerous characteristics found only in apes. Tyler seems to be controversial, but I have not seen any rebuttals to this identity.



Sangiran 6 / Meganthropus A
Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Paranthropus palaeojavanicus, Homo erectus, Homo palaeojavanicus/Homo meganthropus

This fossil mandible fragment is by far the best known remain of Meganthropus. According to Tyler's 2001 paper on Meganthropus cranial remains, this is apparently the only available piece of Meganthropus for study, or at least until very recently. An illustration in Heuvelmans's On the Track of Unknown Animals demonstrates that this jaw is about half as big again as a human jaw, which surely must have captured a lot of imaginations. As noted in many materials (e.g. From Lucy to Language) teeth and jaws are very poor measurements of overall body size in primates, and Homo sapiens is fairly small-jawed. This mandible fragment is still apparently larger than any known Homo erectus jaws, and some characteristics appear to link it to other robust jaws. Kaifu et al in their very technical 2005 paper on mandibular remains from Java did not cover this fossil in detail but used the designation Sangiran 6a and 6b...and I have no idea what that is in reference to.



Sangiran 8 / Meganthropus B
Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Homo erectus

This fossil mandibular fragment was originally thought to be approaching Sangiran "6a" in size, but Kaifu et al (2005a) take into account the crushed nature of the fossil and put it in the same size class (actually slightly smaller than) as Sangiran 5 and Sangiran 9. The third molar (the only preserved tooth) was still noticeably larger than any other teeth compared to it. The authors compare this fragment to other robust mandibles (Sangiran 5, 6a, 9, Bk 7909 and possibly Bk 8606) which share traits such as double rooted premolars which are atypical from Homo erectus. If Sangiran 5 is a pongid, then that makes comparisons quite problematic (more on this later).



Sangiran 9 / Mandible C / Meganthropus C ?
Pithecanthropus erectus, Pithecanthropus dubius, Homo erectus

Meganthropus designations skip from B to D, so it is not clear which one gets the "C" designation. This fossil was compared to other Meganthropus designated fossils by Kaifu et al 2005a and Tyler 2001b, but the relation seems very tenuous at best.



Sangiran 33 / Bk 7905 / Mandible H / Meganthropus C ?

The C designation may have been mentioned as Meganthropus C in Kramer's 1994 "A Critical Analysis of Southeast Asian Australopithecines" which is currently not online and quite unavailable to me. Drat. Tyler 2001b comments on this specimen and concludes that it is quite similar to Sangiran 9 and to a lesser degree the then un-reconstructed Sangiran 8. He theorized they might make a morphological "type", but what it was and whatever relation to Meganthropus it had he did not say. Kaifu et al make a somewhat similar conclusion, but again draw troubling comparisons to Sangiran 5.



Sangiran XX / Meganthropus D

This damaged mandible was found by a local farmer and recovered by Sartono in 1993. Tyler in his 2001a paper was the first to describe this fossil, which approaches Sangiran 6 in both the size of the mandible and the size/shape of the teeth. The pattern of tooth enlargement is apparently similar to Sangiran 9. Comparing Tyler's measurements with Kuifu 2005b's other erectines, this specimen seems to exceed other non-Sangiran erectines noticeably, but not outrageously (as say, compared to a H. sapiens). Tyler concludes that this specimen and Mandible H exceed what is normal for H. erectus.



Bk 8606

This is another fairly robust mandible that is unfortunately quite damaged. Kaifu et al 2005a say that it is too damaged to make meaningful conclusions, and I'll believe them on that.



Meganthropus I
Paranthropus palaeojavanicus, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Homo palaeojavanicus/Homo meganthropus, Homo erectus

This fragment of a skull was discovered by Sartono in 1959. It was described in an unpublished paper in 1991 by Sartono (I'm not sure why there was such a gap) and was finally published in Tyler 2001b. According to Sartono and Tyler, the fragment is part of the left parietal and upper occipital, but in an unpublished paper (presented as an abstract in 2003) by A. C. Durband, he re-interpreted it to be a lateral cranial vault and found it to be well within the range of H. erectus. I'd be curious about further discussion on this interpretation, but it will have to wait...



Sangiran 27

Discovered in 1979, this specimen is still apparently sitting in its matrix and awaiting further description. Tyler 2001a regards this as being a possible "Meganthropus" similar to Meganthropus II containing facial bones lacking in that specimen. It looks we'll have to wait again and see if a paper gets published on this one...



Sangiran 31 / Meganthropus II
Homo palaeojavanicus/Homo meganthropus, Homo erectus

Found in the early 80's, this fossil has been described by Sartono and Tyler, who pointed out that it received "remarkably little attention" in 2001a. The partial skull is apparently quite large even compared with the other "Meganthropus" cranial fragments. While it has been distorted, reconstructed it has the appearance of "a Homo erectus skull of excessive size, thickness, and platycephaly". Indeed, the width of the skull is around 164-200% of the height, as compared to 121-134% in most H. erectus. Even more interesting is a double sagittal crest (has anybody heard of this before?) and evidence of a chewing apparatus rivaling the largest Paranthropus species. The cranial capacity was estimated at 800 to 900 cubic centimeters, rather on the low side. Tyler's paper was the only one to comment on body size, and reasoned that the thickness of the occipital and nuchal plane indicated "an exceptionally large body". Durband analyzed this skull too and concluded that it did not immediately group with H. erectus, but fit in well enough with the H. erectus hypodigm (specimen sample) as to not support the genus Meganthropus. Tyler, of course, proposes an offshoot/relative of H. erectus called Homo paleojavanicus, not a separate genus. Discussion is lacking, of course.

There is a reconstruction of this skull using Sangiran 6 for the jaw. I have not heard any analysis on the accuracy of this or if it was based on an Australopithecus or not.



Meganthropus III
Homo paleojavanicus/Homo meganthropus, Homo erectus

Discovered in 1983 and described for the first time in Tyler 2001a, this is a right occipital fragment. Durband (2003, unpublished) contends through unknown means that this fossil re-interpreted falls within the norm for H. erectus. Further discussion on this is lacking to my knowledge.



Meganthropus africanus
Paranthropus robustus

Curiously, the worker Weinert described Meganthropus-sized teeth from Africa in 1950 (found in 1939 by Kohl-Larsen) as...an African Meganthropus! These fossils were of course Paranthropus, and have somewhat confused the matter of Meganthropus as Paranthropus.



Scientific Opinions

Sexual Dimorphism
I first read about this opinion in the book on Gigantopithecus called "Other Origins". Presumably just using Sangiran 6, they stated (rather definitively) that Meganthropus was merely the male of Homo erectus! This view has been taken by the researcher Kramer most recently in 1994. Tyler 2004 points out that while this level of dimorphism (exceeding that of a gorilla) is found in Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis and H. habilis, it is not found in Homo erectus in any other population. There are of course morphological traits separating large and small fossils from Java (read on).

Australopithecine
This opinion was first theorized upon by J. T. Robinson, and has been occasionally held up by others such as Krantz. After Kramer's statistical analysis in 1994 strongly against this (according to Tyler), I haven't seen any more papers on this subject, so I suppose it can be regarded as a relic theory. In the topsey turvey world of Paleoanthrolopology, who knows though...

Extreme variation
This is the most widespread scientific theory on Meganthropus: for the most part it is only regarded as part of the Homo erectus hypodigm (to recycle a pedantic word). However, it should be noted that there is a very limited amount of material available (i.e. Sangiran 6) and that there has been a lot of recent research done by individuals who do not necessarily believe this (Kaifu et al and Tyler).

Multiple species
Tyler proposes a species related to Homo erectus (presumably either a direct offshoot or sister group) to be named either Homo palaeojavanicus (2001) or Homo meganthropus (2004). Kaifu et al 2005b erroneously state that he regards this as an Australopithecus africanus / Homo habilis (not conventionally equated) which he mentions nowhere. He does mention older propositions of those taxa being present in his papers though, and possibly related to Meganthropus.



What now?

This has definitely been another good instance of me biting off more than I can chew. Reading through Kaifu made me choke there for a bit. Hopefully if somebody more qualified comes by (with a lot more time) they could find this useful. John Hawks on his Weblog made an interesting little passing comment that perhaps we'll see Meganthropus again now that island dwarfism in hominids has become mainstream. We've already seen in the past that giants in the past can be popular and mainstream...with some help from the media and a good fossil I think that this could make a name for themselves with this. As for me, I'm afraid I'm a tad too thin-skinned for this sort of business, Paleoanthropology seems like it can be nasty business. But don't let that dissuade you!

Then of course there is the question of what Meganthropus exactly is anyways. The comparisons of some robust mandibles to that of an ape (apparently) are troubling in that it seems that the characters are more due to robustness than to actual phylogeny. Say, this reminds me of that cat skull I looked at. It definitely seems that this is some sort of relative of Homo erectus, but where does it fit in? The hypodigm (sorry) concept really does seem to be a matter of opinion, and I think that with evolution this rapid and recent, the concept of a species reveals itself as being a fairly arbitrary concept. Looking at the myriad of fossils: do all of them really divide so neatly as often portrayed? Why is there controversy as to which fossil belongs to which species? Humans like to categorize things, and I think that human evolution itself was far more complicated than we would like to accept. Look at how our concept of evolution progressed from the "strait line" diagram to the bush we have now. I have the feeling that we have only scratched the surface of what paleoanthropology (har har) can teach us. That's just my underqualified opinion though.

Even if Meganthropus II is classified definitively as Homo erectus some day, it still is an incredibly exciting find. Unless somebody comes along and ruins my fun, it looks like there actually was a "giant" of sorts after all.



-Cameron




P.S. Even though this is meant to be an introduction and not a complete history, if there is something you think is vitally important that I foolishly forgot to add (or more good sources) please tell me and I'll add it in. If Tyler, Durband, or Kaifu and his gang wish to pipe in and criticize the hell out of me, feel free! Please alert me to any discoveries or upcoming publications so I can write a blog documenting it rather than further bloating this monstrocity (which was mercifully whittled significantly beforehand). I also have no idea how Darren Naish writes his post with any manner of frequency after trying something like this, yeesh. Do you sleep?



References and Further Reading:
(Note: Registrations or being at a University required to read these files)

Ciochon, Russell; Olsen, John; James, Jamie. Other Origins: The Search for the Giant Ape in Human Prehistory. Bantam Books, 1990.

Durband, A. C. 2003. A re-examination of purported Meganthropus cranial fragments. American Journal of Physical Anthropology supplements for 2003. Available: Here

Heuvelmans, Bernard. On the Track of Unknown Animals. Kegan Paul International, London England, 1995. Third Edition.

Johanson, Donald and Edgar, Blake. From Lucy to Language. Simon & Schuster Editions, 1996.

Kaifu, Yousuke; Aziz, Fachroel; Baba, Hisao. 2005 (a). Hominid Mandibular Remains From Sangiran: 1952-1986 Collection. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 128: 497-519
Available: Here

Kaifu, Yousuke; Baba, Hisao; Azis, Fachroel; Indriati, Etty; Schrenk, Friendemann; Jacob, Teuku. 2005 (b). Taxonomic Affinities and Evolutionary History of the Early Pleistocene Hominids of Java: Dentognathic Evidence. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 128: 709-726. Available: Here

Lovejoy, C. Owen. 1970. The Taxonomic Status of the 'Meganthropus' Mandibular Fragments from the Djetis Beds of Java. Man. Vol. 5 No. 2, 228-236. Available: Here

Tyler, D.E. 2001a. "Meganthropus" Cranial Fossils from Java. Human Evolution. Vo. 16 N. 2, p 81-101. Available: Here

Tyler, D. E. 2001b. Two New "Meganthropus" Mandibles From Java. Human Evolution. Vo. 16, N. 3-4, p. 151-158. Available: Here

Tyler, D. E. 2004. An examination of the taxonomic status of the fragmentary mandible Sangiran 5, (Pithecanthropus dubius), Homo erectus, "Meganthropus", or Pongo? Quaternary International. 117, 125-130. Available: Here

Meganthropus in popular culture

Dear Constant Readers,

Good lord my mind is scrambled right now, even more so than usual. The week that I've been off school I've pondered how to reason out the concept of uncertainty, how many branches of armored reptiles to have on Connor's Island, if I should make a faux field guide to the inhabitants of said island, an increasingly bizarre and complicated plot for the story involving the island, colossal arthropods and other gigantic non-cephalopod invertebrates, animal maximum sizes in general, that cat skull again and...mighty Meganthropus. I've been wanting to write about Meganthropus for a long time (see here) and I think it is time to finally sit down and finish this project. This article will serve as a primer for a pdf riddled monstrosity which looms in the near future.

So what the heck is Meganthropus? While the name is occasionally mentioned in Paleoanthropology books, the mentions in non-scientific texts are what I'm going to look at now. Going through every hit for "Meganthropus" on Google, there definitely seemed to be a large number of Young Earth Creationists writing on this subject, often using exactly the same information. I believe that one of the original propagators of this information (as it had the most) is this website here which covers anomalous archeology, Cryptozoology, and so forth in order to support religious beliefs. Riiiiight. Their main contention is that Meganthropus (along with the Sivapithecine ape Gigantopithecus) are in fact the same as the giants* mentioned in the Bible. The article starts off by boasting that science dismisses the idea of giant early humans due to the inadequacy of evolution to explain them...perhaps forgetting that Gigantopithecus, Meganthropus, and some robust Australopithecines (i.e. "Meganthropus africanus") were in fact initially described initially as giant hominids by scientists. These Creationist authors do not seem to pay attention to anatomical differences and either split something as a man (i.e. modern man) or an ape. I'd hate to say it, but I can't tell if this website is a parody or not. The reasonings are so incredibly baseless and clueless that I think YECs should be ashamed of material like this. I can tolerate religious beliefs, I cannot tolerate information this bad.

*The subject of the cultural ubiquity of giants is very interesting to me and I would like to cover it at a later date. As appealing as the romantic suggestion of some prehistoric memory of a larger early race is, perhaps it ties in with a human fascination of size...or a fear of something more powerful than them.


Parody or not, there are a lot of claims on the Internet regarding the size of Meganthropus that this site repeats. It states that:

There is no controversy about these facts; there was a race or group of people found in Australia called "meganthropus" by anthropologists. These people were of very large size--estimated between 7 to 12 feet tall, depending on what source you read.

Now hold on a minute there, NO controversy? Aside from our species, pinnipeds, bats, and rodents, there are no other placentals known from Australia. I have never seen a specific size estimated for Meganthropus by a worker, so I think that figure is somebody's personal estimate that got cited as fact. One of the most pathetic things I have ever seen on a Creationist website is this sorry little illustration demonstrating the difference in skull size between a human, chimpanzee, "Australopithecus" and "Meganthropus". Having the book "From Lucy to Language" with amazing life-sized pictures of skulls; it is apparent the "Australopithecus" skull is probably a Paranthropus robustus and the "Meganthropus" skull is a Paranthropus boisei. The P. robustus skull is small compared to a modern human and P. boisei is roughly the same size, due mostly to outrageous jaw musculature. The use of this picture either demonstrates extreme incompetence or outright fraud.

Instead of getting caught up with Creationism, I probably should have mentioned that claims for Meganthropus in Australia mostly seem to be from the (non-Creationist) Rex Gilroy. He is an unconventional researcher who, among many strange things, claims to have found gigantic fossil footprints, skulls , and various body parts including a...fossil...phallus....all in Australia! Nobody else is talking about his astonishing treasure trove of pygmies, H. erectus** and giants, so either the local scientists have a Vast Conspiracy Undermining The Noble Rogue Researcher or they have been misinterpreted. Looking at the pictures, they really do seem like strangely shaped rocks, but without better photos and better documentation, I can't definitely say anything. As opposed to his earlier works, he theorized that instead of actually having Meganthropus present on the continent, the "giants" are just parallels of them. That's pretty level headed in light of comments about 3 million year old H. erectus fossils from New Zealand and Australian apes.

**I should be careful here, as there has been some theorizing by Paleoanthropologists that H. erectus was in fact present in Australia. The Kow Swamp skull, also in the "From Lucy to Language" book is occasionally cited as evidence, but appears to be our species. Maybe potentially wayward erectines could make for another post.


Some of Gilroy's more interesting finds are the mega tools, which bring up a remarkably non-vulgar Google search. IIRC similarly oversized tools have been found elsewhere, but I'm not sure of their validity either. The mega tools do appear interesting and don't seems to be misshapen rocks, but a big tool does not always indicate a big tool user. What is more unreasonable, a colossal tool user or (pre-) human imagination?

Gilroy often brushes upon Cryptozoology, and indeed some in this field connect Meganthropus with Bigfoot and other mysterious hominids. Bernard Heuvelmans mentioned the fossil in "On the Track of Unknown Animals" and personally estimated a size of 2.40 to 3 meters tall (7'10" to 9'10") going from Von Koenigswald's observation that the teeth were 3/4 the size of Gigantopithecus's. Is this rather dubious estimate the basis for Internet size claims? Heuvelmans seems to connect Meganthropus with some reports of giants on Sumatra, but overall favors the ape Gigantopithecus. Heuvelmans may be vague on classification, but Mark A. Hall, Loren Coleman, and Patrick Huyghe all claim that there is a species of Paranthropus behind some sasquatch reports ("Neo-Giants") and use Meganthropus as supporting evidence of both size and the presence of the taxa closer to North America.

So you may be a bit confused about the associations between Meganthropus and both Homo erectus and Australopithecines. What is going on here? You're going to have to wait for a future post for what professional science has written on these incredible fossils.

-Cameron

Proto-Europoids, Anthropometry and all that fun stuff

Dear Constant Readers,

If I do have any readers left...good lord! Has it really been a month since I've last posted? The last semester of school was especially brutal to me, seeing as how I appear to have some severe Organic Chemistry-related learning disability. Thank goodness that isn't the measure of the man or I'd be regarded as some gibbering abomination dwelling in the attic that would best be killed by fire. But it isn't. To segway into my topic perhaps a bit prematurely, I could say that perhaps there are many other things that a man is unfairly measured by. Measurements of the head and the neat classification of people into very specific categories (e.g. Armenoid, Pontic Mediterranean) was quite fashionable and mainstream in decades past, but has since been pushed out of the spotlight by genetic testing. I'm not saying that looking at skull characteristics is an unscientific practice per se, it can be used to study individuals when genetic testing is unavailable (such as the Kenniwick man). However, craniofacial studies and anything measuring and separating people can be twisted for racists use with startling ease. What is written in some of the old books is startling by today's standards, but it is no surprise that the Internet preserves these relics. With the passions in this field perhaps I don't quite know what I'm getting into here. Oh well.

The website that initially re-prompted my interesting in this topic was the Anthropological Research Page by Dienekes Pontikos. The site mostly covers Greek anthropology (shocking!) and claims not to have any overt bias against other peoples. I won't discuss the rest of the content of the website (on this post at least), but what initially got my attention were the purported Anthropometric, Racial, and Black or White calculators. These did require a lot of measurements, and some were vague, but I should have at least gotten ballpark figures. I re-checked them using photographs with un-vague points of reference too. What was surprising to me was that on the "Black or White" test I was classified as having a 100% chance of being "Negroid"! Despite roughly 85% of my ancestry not being officially known; judging by location, appearance, surnames, et cetera, they're undoubtedly almost entirely (probably entirely) Northern/Western European. Hmm. I changed my minimum frontal value from 130 to 110 mm (since it was vague without a skull) and sure enough I suddenly became 100% "Caucasian". Huh? Is that all race hinders on, or was it some loophole in the system? The Anthropometric calculator, which used to most measurements, found me to be "Slovenian" (close enough I suppose), but almost put me rather close to Japanese. A little odd. But what I found to be most interesting was the "Racial Analysis" for...Caucasian males only? It seems rather remarkable that people could be so sub-divided and that I am a "Proto-Europoid", whatever the heck that is.

Being recently bald, I couldn't resist but take my own anthropometric-looking pictures. My head seems pretty blocky and longer that usual and I do indeed have difficulty cramming it into hats.


According to the Caucasian Metric Types page containing all the possible answers, "Proto-Europoids" have basically just big, average-looking heads. Apparently this is a "race" that lived in Europe before some Indo-Europeans came over and infused with them. So how can this phenotype possibly be considered a race? Instead of proposing relic pockets of these and different races in Europe, wouldn't it just make more sense if this is just a normal part of human variation and does not represent a "type" at all? When people look at their genealogies, they don't seem to realize how many ancestors they have, it grows exponentially after all. Unless you're severely inbred, if you go back far enough your ancestors are going to be a pretty diverse group of thousands of people. And you'll undoubtedly share many of these ancestors with many people you'd consider a different "sub-race" or perhaps even race. Of course Europeans look different and you can probably tell which region came from, but I find this classification scheme more than a little far-fetched. And so do most modern Anthropologists as this scheme is no longer accepted today. With the advent of genetics, it is pretty obvious that there is no big connection with the overall genotype and a phenotype controlled by only a few genes.

So then of course, why on earth would this classification system get proposed and even become stylish at one point of time? When these people separated European races, it was mostly for separating the Nordic people from the rest of the population. I recall reading one old book back at college which rambled on about how culturally important Vikings were, while also admitting that they really didn't do too much. It really came across as desperate pleading more than anything, and I'm amazed that it got printed in a scientific book. After reading thousands of pages of letters by H. P. Lovecraft it became readily apparent that one of the man's greatest flaws was his extreme racism. It did allow me an opportunity to see into the mind of one of those people and made me understand why he would so openly embrace this ideology. He was simply a proud person and extremely insecure about his physical frailty, so he imagined himself to be descended from mighty warriors and noble Romans (given his dark features). When he found a Welsh ancestor he was a little freaked out. Even modern-day white supremacists aren't that bad. Fortunately he eventually did get more accepting, but the racism was still always there.

This sort of extreme racism even against other Europeans has died out, but I still think the causes for this have not gone away. People just want to feel superior to one another and find some way to separate them from others. The idea of appearance determining intelligence or "goodness" is silly, but some people truly did believe it and use it as an emotional crutch. PZ Myers on his Pharyngula blog wrote a fascinating post about how the science fiction concept of generations getting stupider and stupider has much to do with this same mindset. That post is definitely much more recommended and important than this one.

Racism is too big a topic to cover with one post, so undoubtedly if I come across any more interesting (e.g. depressing) material I'll probably post on it. But now, it's time to move on to more familiar territory.

-Cameron