Welcome to the Paraphylome

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I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: humans are apes; apes, old world monkeys, and new world monkey are primates; and humans are primates. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

So you can guess how I reacted when I saw this advertisement as I was perusing the latest issue of Nature. Here is what they're pimping, an "Omics Gateway". You know how much I love -omics. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) tells us, "The Omics Gateway provides life scientists a convenient portal into publications relevant to large-scale biology from journals throughout NPG." It's a veritable omeome.

But they can't get their monophyletic taxa correct. "From primates and humans" makes as much sense as "to Drosophila and arthropods." In fact, that's what they should have done, just to show how foolish they sound. I like you Nature Publishing group. You've got blogs. You've got great specialty journals. Don't make me go find reasons to hate on you.

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Once upon a time, a Roman author named Quintus Ennius wrote: "how like us is that very ugly beast, the ape!" It was quoted by Cicero, and from him Bacon, Montaigne and various others. But always it was thought that apes (simia, literally "the similar ones"), which in that time include monkeys and…
A somewhat tamarin-like restoration of Ganlea megacania. By Mark A. Klingler of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It seems that almost every time a new fossil primate is announced the first question everyone asks is "Is it one of our ancestors?" Nevermind that it is all but impossible to…
Is it a Falsehood that Humans Evolve from Apes? How about this one: Is it a Falsehood that Humans did NOT evolve from Apes???? Yes and no. Humans descend from a population of primates from which other apes also descended (minimally the two species of living chimps) and which was part of the…
The newly reported Saadanius hijazensis may or may not be a "missing link" but in order for this monkey to climb onto the primate family tree, a new branch had to be sprouted. So, not only is Saadanius hijazensis a new species, but it is a member of a new taxonomic Family, Saadaniidae, which in…

You're looking at a marketing document. It is unfortunate but there is vast difference in believability between marketing documents and trade publications.

I would expect more of ABI since they're a gigantic company, but it has been my experience that marketing people rarely ask scientists about the correct usage of a word. I wish it were otherwise but the marketing people (that I know) usually just find words that look correct and plug them in. I try not to cringe too much.

wow. that is dumb, dumb, dumb. you don't have to cladistically self-aware to do that, that's as stupid as from felines to cats, from whales to dolphins, etc. etc. we're talkin' pre-linneus!

Yeah, that is pretty silly. Don't they have biologists in their marketing dept?

Speaking of their blogs, their Nature Genetics blog has been disappointing. All they have are links to papers and not much else.