Physical Anthropology Instructor: Jim Snoke

Spring Semester, 2007

Lecture Series: 2^nd Week

Directions: Your task is to commit these criteria to memory. In that process, you should begin to learn the various terms that are presented here so that each criterion has a clear and unambiguous meaning to you. As you proceed through the course, you will be asked to consult these criteria. You will also learn that claims made by individuals are required to withstand the scrutiny of the large, scientific community of scholars and researchers. It is the scientific community that determines the validity of the taxonomy of the fossil record, for example, not the individuals who propose the changes to it.

Criteria For Scientific Judgments

1) The burden of proof always rests with the claimant.

2) Fragmentary evidence cannot be used as primary or self-sufficient data.

3) Multiple criteria must be used for making assessments of placement.

4) Forms found in similar environments and with a similar morphology may be convergent on those ecosystems, and therefore any morphological similarity may be incidental to locale.

5) Forms with different morphology and found in similar environments may be divergent even though the morphological differences may appear significant.

6) Phyletic schemes based on reversible change should be critically examined.

7) Attempts to identify paleospecies change should be approached with extreme caution.

8) Relationships between form and function must be understood before serious evaluation of evolutionary relationships can be made.

9) Evolutionary schemes that argue for multiple species within a genus or multiple genera within a family should be critically examined.

10) Because splitting is undesirable, elevating varietal differences to the level of scientific classification is meaningless.