Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun A taxonomic
subfamily within thefamily Hominidae — theorangutans .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This suite of molar morphologies is also found to varying degrees in Pongo and Sivapithecus, but not in African apes and humans, and may be diagnostic of subfamily Ponginae.
Archive 2009-02-01 2009
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• In the light of DNA comparisons, one solution is to place orangutans in the subfamily Ponginae and to combine African apes and humans in the subfamily Homininae.
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However, a second consideration makes it more compelling to divide the taxa into lower-level designations — that is to make our family divisions more consistent with the level of variation and relatedness found among other families of the primates (Delson et al., 2000) Thus the trend among paleoanthropologists is to use the family Hominidae to refer to the great apes and humans, the subfamily Homininae to designate chimps, gorillas, and humans (with the orangutan in the Ponginae), and the tribe Hominini to isolate humans and their fossil ancestors.
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