More Hominid Hype: “The Ape That Took Over the World”

If you can handle some more hype about human evolution, here’s a snippet from the (more or less) recent BBC documentary “The Ape That Took Over the World.” It is about the controversial placement of Kenyanthropus in hominid evolution;

I do not have time to do a full write-up here (especially since I have not as yet seen the show in full), but the evolutionary placement of Kenyanthropus is more controversial than this clip admits. Kenyanthropus appears to be a hominin, but whether it represents a new genus, an already-known form of Australopithecus, or something else is still being debated. It certainly cannot be called one of our direct ancestors with any confidence, contrary to the hype presented in the show.

[Note: I am blogging about this now because the clip was added earlier this month to YouTube, thus I assumed that it had aired recently. I was wrong, but I will leave this post up for anyone (like me) who had not heard about the show.]