Overkill at Olduvai Gorge

Abstract

IT does not seem worth devoting more time, or space, to discussing that part of my argument with Dr Paul Martin, on the subject of Pleistocene overkill, which deals with percentages of genera that may have become extinct at a given point of time, or that have survived to the present day. My reasons for saying this are as follows: (a) there is too little agreement as to what constitutes a genus; (b) that even since the publication of the earlier notes by Martin and myself last year, Bulcharus has been made a synonym of Pelorovis, and it has been suggested that Tapinochoerus is generically identical with Orthostonyx. It must also be noted that the majority of anthropologists now treat Telanthropus as belonging to the genus of Homo and the others as Australopithecus. No one accepts it as a distinct genus. Similarly, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Zinjanthropus are now all genus Australopithecus.