Hominidae: The Great Apes

Within secular biology, the family Hominidae includes the ‘great apes’ (fossil and extant) and humans. Within creation biology, we know that this is one of the (likely) few family-level groupings that encompasses more than one separately created kind (i.e. it is polybaraminic). Genesis tells us that man was created separately, so there is no direct genetic link to any of the other primate groups. Man is not descended from nonhuman primates.

This does not mean that modern man, Homo sapiens, is the only member of humankind. Adam may not have been Homo sapiens—he may have been closer to what we see in Homo erectus. All human fossils (Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and likely others) are from strata that was formed after the Flood, so if they are true humans, they are descendants of Noah. Exactly which fossil Homo species should be included into humanity is still ongoing research within creation science, and it is possible that some Homo species should be placed in separate genera. For this article, I will be primarily looking at the ‘great apes’ within the Hominidae, rather than at the lineage of Adam.

Some fossil hominids are better associated through critical character traits to extant taxa than are others. As new fossils are found, phylogenetic models may change, but this is unlikely to make much of a difference for a baraminic exploration. A recent review and phylogenetic interpretation of the Hominidae (Pugh 2022), with an emphasis on Middle-Late Miocene fossil apes, provides a reasonable framework for both secular and baraminological research.

As shown below, the Hominidae (exclusive of mankind) is an apobaramin that may be a monobaramin or it may be a polybaramin. The subfamilies Homininae and Ponginae are apobaramins that may or may not be monobaramins. At this point, I consider the question of holobaramins within or encompassing the Hominidae to be open; we may not have enough data yet for a good answer. We will look at some of the recent creationist studies further below.

All three hominid groups (stem hominids, hominines, and pongines) first appear expansively in Miocene strata. Only pongines and hominines are found above Miocene strata. For the creation model, this suggests rapid and extensive diversification during the warm ‘early Miocene’ post-Flood period (whether or not these three groups are in the same baramin). This is a family with high fossil diversity, but low extant diversity.

Pugh’s (2022) research indicated that several formerly included members of the Hominidae may be better considered hominoids (for example, Oreopithecus and Samburupithecus as stem hylobatids, and Nacholapithecus and Equatorius as stem hominoids). Several other genera were not considered to have enough physical material for an effective analysis, and certain other genera require further evaluation. In addition, Sinopithecus is a hominid of uncertain position—it may be pongine, hominine, or other (Urciuoli and Alba 2023).

Pugh’s phylogenetic model supports groupings of Miocene hominid apes (stem hominids, closely related to but not directly within the line leading to great apes and hominines) separate from the pongines and hominines. A loose ‘dryopith’ group would include Dryopithecus, Anoiapithecus, Pierolapithecus, Danuvius, Rudapithecus, and Hispanopithecus. Kenyapithecus and Griphopithecus may also be stem hominids. If the hominid apes at large are a single baraminic lineage, the latter two genera may be closest to what the Ark kind resembled. Pugh (2022) noted that Lufengpithecus hudienensis nests with the stem hominids rather than with the pongines (where Lufengpithecus lufengensis nests)—prompting Urciuoli and Alba (2023) to move L. hudienensis and another early species, L. keiyuanensis, to the genus Sinopithecus (currently tribe incertae sedis).

The dryopiths were an extensive and rapid European radiation during the post-Flood ‘Miocene’ period. They ranged in size from a small gibbon-sized ape to about that of a small chimpanzee. Dryopithecus species ranged approximately 40-80 lbs (Fleagle 1998). Dryopithecus was likely a quadruped capable of ‘cautious climbing’, while Pierolapithecus had an upright (orthograde) body plan (Urciuoli and Alba 2023). Danuvius has been proposed to exhibit slow arboreal bipedalism, though not striding terrestrial bipedalism (Böhme et al. 2019; Böhme et al. 2020). Most were fruit and leaf eaters. Several European Miocene sites indicate the presence of numerous ape species, dryopith and otherwise (Pickford 2012; Zanolli et al. 2021), indicating a climatically suitable, resource-rich environment. The presence of severe caries (dental decay) in one Dryopithecus specimen suggests an extremely high sugar-rich diet (Fuss et al. 2018). These apes were likely part of the fruit-eating guild that provided seed-dispersal and aided mutualistic adaptation to large fruit size (and higher sugar content) in Eurasian fruit trees (Spengler III et al. 2023). Key environmental factors changed with the middle-late Miocene cooling and aridification, resulting in the retreat of forests and the disappearance of this radiation.

Kenyapithecus was found in Miocene Kenya and Turkey (Kelley 2008), while the related Griphopithecus was found in Turkey, Austria, and Slovakia. Griphopithecus ranged an estimated 60-105 lbs (Fleagle 1998). The relationship of these genera to other hominids is unsettled. The Turkish species of both genera were sympatric and likely older than the other species in Africa and Europe (Urciuoli and Alba 2023). These genera both appear in older Miocene strata than where European dryopiths and Asian pongines are found, so hypothetically could be ancestral.

Buronius, a small fossil ape recently described from Miocene Germany (Böhme, et al. 2024), was considered in its description as a possible crown hominid (directly within the line leading to great apes and hominines), though based on limited material. It was sympatric with the dryopith Danuvius.

Using Pugh’s (2022) model, we can categorize Sivapithecus, Indopithecus, Khoratpithecus, Ankarapithecus, and Lufengpithecus lufengensis as Miocene pongines. Gigantopithecus is known only from the Pleistocene. Meganthropus (not included in Pugh’s research) also appears in the Pleistocene. The modern orangutan, Pongo, appears in the Pleistocene and survives (though endangered) today. Size-wise, Fleagle (1998) estimated Ankarapithecus at 180 lbs, Lufengpithecus at 110 lbs, Sivapithecus species from 90-200 lbs, Indopithecus at 420 lbs, and Gigantopithecus at 500 lbs. Khoratpithecus piriyai was about the size of L. lufengensis (Chaimanee et al. 2004), while Khoratpithecus magnus was estimated at 30% larger (Chaimanee et al. 2022).

The Ponginae is an Asian radiation, with three possible, though tentative, tribes (Urciuoli and Alba 2023). The Lufengpithecini includes Ankarapithecus and Lufengpithecus, and likely Meganthropus (Zanolli et al. 2019). The Sugrivapithecini includes Sivapithecus, Indopithecus, and Gigantopithecus. The Pongini includes Khoratpithecus and Pongo.

The ‘orangutan’-like facial features showed up early, particularly notable in Sivapithecus (Urciuoli and Alba 2023). Unlike orangutans and other modern great apes, Sivapithecus was pronograde in locomotion (traveling on all fours with its torso parallel to the ground). Assuming pongines developed from earlier hominids, pronograde posture would be the ancestral condition, and orthograde (upright) posture in later pongines would be a derived condition, homoplastic with orthograde posture in hominines and dryopithecines. Sivapithecus may also have been an ‘arboreal knuckle-walker,’ somewhat different from knuckle-walking in terrestrial African apes today (Begun and Kivell 2011).

Gigantopithecus blacki was a very large fossil ape from China and Southeast Asia (Noerwidi et al. 2016; Zhang and Harrison 2017; Zhang et al. 2024) that is known only from a few mandibles and many teeth. In southern China it is known from Early to Middle Pleistocene cave sites, with fewer teeth being found in younger cave sites, and fewer younger cave sites overall, suggesting a dwindling population (Zhao and Zhang 2012; Zhang and Harrison 2017). Early Pleistocene teeth are much smaller than later teeth, indicating an initially rapid increase in the species’ size. Limited Gigantopithecus dental remains are known from Late Pleistocene deposits in the Lang Trang cave in northern Vietnam and the Shuangtan cave in southern China (Lopatin et al. 2022). Gigantopithecus appears to be closely related to the gorilla-sized Indopithecus of Miocene India and Pakistan (Patnaik et al. 2014), though Indopithecus is likely not a direct ancestor (Chaimanee and Jaeger 2023).

Lufengpithecus appears to have been an arboreal ape specialized for climbing, but lacked many of the orangutan-like facial characters (Chaimanee and Jaeger 2023). Meganthropus requires further investigation, but there are suggestive teeth from China that may indicate its presence there (Han et al. 2024) in addition to the recognized specimens from Indonesia (Zanolli et al. 2019).

There are three recognized species of extant orangutans (Pongo), currently confined to Borneo and Sumatra. There has been a great deal of published interest in their ancestry, though their recognized fossil history is limited to Pleistocene and Holocene Pongo fossils throughout Southeast Asia and in southern China (Bacon and Long 2001; Zhao et al. 2009; Ibrahim et al. 2013; Harrison et al. 2014; Liao et al. 2022; Liang et al. 2024). Whether Khoratpithecus from Miocene Thailand and Myanmar is ancestral to, or simply a sister genus to Pongo, is as yet undetermined (Urciuoli and Alba 2023), though the two genera do share a number of traits that set them apart from the other Asian hominids (Chaimanee and Jaeger 2023). Khoratpithecus piriyai has several specialized dental traits not found in orangutans, suggesting that if Pongo developed from Khoratpithecus, it was likely from an earlier species with fewer derived traits, such as K. chiangmuanensis (Tafforeau 2007). Unfortunately, the lack of Pliocene fossils of Asian great apes makes any speculative connection tenuous (Chaimanee and Jaeger 2023).

Schwartz et al. (1995) described a hominid from Pleistocene Vietnam as Langsonia liquidens, but with limited material available its affinities are unknown (Harrison et al. 2014). An additional hominid (known as the ‘mystery ape,’ smaller than an orangutan) is recognized from the karst region of southern China, possibly elsewhere, but there is not enough material yet to distinguish whether it is pongine or hominine (Ciochon 2009; Zhang 2024).

For the secular model, hominine evolution is particularly of interest for the rise of bipedalism and the origin of humanity. For the creation model, this is the emergence of very different ‘great ape’ morphotypes from the pongine forms.

Pugh’s (2022) model indicates three main groups within the Homininae. The first tentatively includes Graecopithecus and Ouranopithecus from Miocene Greece and Turkey as possible stem hominines (Urciuoli and Alba 2023). The second includes the extant African genera Pan (chimps) and Gorilla. The third includes the African australopithecines (Miocene-Pliocene Orrorin and Ardipithecus, Pliocene Kenyanthropus, and Pliocene-Pleistocene Australopithecus and Paranthropus). Hominines may have started to develop in Africa, with an early dispersal event into adjacent Eurasia leading to the graecopithecins (Urciuoli and Alba 2023).

Sahelanthropus, from Late Miocene Chad, is possibly hominine (Neves et al. 2024), but its exact relationships are uncertain. Nakalipithecus and Chororapithecus from Miocene Africa are possible hominines, though lacking enough evidence for certain placement (Urciuoli and Alba 2023).

The Late Miocene Graecopithecus is known from a fossil mandible found near Athens, Greece, and a possible tooth from Bulgaria (Fuss et al. 2017). Far more specimens of the Late Miocene Ouranopithecus have been found at several sites in Greece, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding its relationship to other clades (Sevim-Erol et al. 2023). Based on additional discoveries, Sevim-Erol et al. (2023) moved an Anatolian species of Ouranopithecus into its own genus, Anadoluvius, bringing the number of graecopithecines to three genera. Ouranopithecus has been estimated to have reached 240 lbs (Fleagle 1998), about the size of a large male orangutan or twice the size of a large chimp. Its heavy tooth enamel and multiple spreading roots support the idea that it was a hard-object (roots, bulbs, nuts) feeder (Koufos et al. 2016).

The two extant African apes, chimpanzees and gorillas (Pan and Gorilla), have an incredibly sparse fossil history. McBrearty and Jablonski (2005) attributed three fossil teeth from the middle Pleistocene Kapthurin Formation in Kenya to Pan. A fossil mandible fragment from the Late Miocene of Niger has been suggested to be a ‘proto-chimpanzee’ (Pickford et al. 2008; Mocke et al. 2022). Chimp- and gorilla-like teeth have been reported from Miocene Kenya (Pickford et al. 2022). Chororapithecus and/or Nakalipithecus have been suggested as possible basal members of the gorilla lineage (Groves 2018), while Ardipithecus has been suggested to have chimp-like characters (Pickford et al. 2022).

Ardipethecus is designated by many secular evolutionists as the Last Common Ancestor between chimpanzees and humans. Still, Ardipithecus is clearly within the australopithecine lineage, one of several “small-brained African bipeds” that appears to have been well-suited for climbing in wooded environments (White et al. 2015; Prang et al. 2021). Its anatomy exhibited numerous traits for upright walking, though not as well-adapted for longer, ‘strenuous’ bouts of walking as seen in Australopithecus (Lovejoy et al. 2009; White et al. 2015).

Orrorin was bipedal, though “probably also capable of climbing trees,” with a femur that “is not identical to that of humans and australopithecines, but is clearly much closer to these hominids than it is to that of apes” (Pickford et al. 2002). Its post-cranial bones are about 1.5 times larger than those of ‘Lucy,’ a female Australopithecus (Pickford et al. 2022). Orrorin exhibited small cheek teeth for its size (microdonty), which appears to have developed into proportionally larger cheek teeth (megadonty) in Australopithecus, then hyper-megadonty in Paranthropus (Senut et al. 2018). This has led some secular evolutionists to argue that humans (which are microdont) did not evolve from megadont australopithecines, but from a separate lineage emerging from Ardipithecus-Orrorin.

Kenyanthropus was described from a fossil cranium exhibiting a “flat face, small brain and small teeth” (Leakey 2001) discovered at a middle Pliocene fossil site on the western side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya (Leakey et al. 2001). No postcranial bones are as yet formally identified for this genus.

Much of the research surrounding Australopithecus revolves around the secular model’s theorizing of a transition to Homo species, even though, as previously noted, not all evolutionists agree with that idea (see also Vaneechoutte et al. 2023). There were 6-8 species, depending on potential synonymies. Most are ‘gracile’ and about five feet, plus or minus a few inches, in height (Burns 1971; McHenry 1974). Australopithecines were bipeds, but some, such as Australopithecus sediba, may have retained traits aiding “substantial climbing and suspensory ability” (Churchill et al. 2018). (See section below, however, for more on Australopithecus sediba.) Besides fossil bones, there are fossil trackways attributed to Australopithecus (Masao et al. 2016). Australopithecines were primarily herbivorous (Teaford and Ungar 2000), but may have incorporated small animals into their diet, just as modern ‘great apes’ do.

Paranthropus (generally the ‘robust’ australopithecines) were a bit smaller on average than the ‘gracile’ Australopithecus, but had more robust skulls with larger cheek teeth and a thicker sagittal crest. Recent evidence via fossil leg and hip bones firmly supports the idea that Paranthropus robustus “was a capable, and probably habitual, terrestrial biped” (Pickering et al. 2025).

There has been a great deal of interest within creation science regarding the expanse and boundaries, or holobaramin, of the human kind. Conversely, of course, this would aid in our understanding of nonhuman hominids. There has been a great deal of debate over the last couple decades over whether certain hominids with allegedly human-like traits are actually human (e.g., Australopithecus sediba, Homo naledi, and Homo floresiensis (Sinclair and Wood 2021)). There are challenges to certain ‘essentialist’ models of human/nonhuman classification (Wood 2023). Statistical baraminology is one tool that has been used extensively to try and sort out answers, but one I consider best used in conjunction with palaeobiological and biogeographical evidence (as with Ross et al. 2023).

The generally accepted human ‘core cluster’ includes Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo erectus, which are known to have hybridized. This, character trait analysis, and palaeobiological data, support their inclusion with the human kind. Broadly, statistical baraminology (Wood and Brummel 2023) and cultural data (Ross et al. 2023) also support the inclusion of Denisovans, Homo naledi, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo floresiensis, and probable inclusion of Homo antecessor, Homo luzonensis, and Homo longi, while less certain are Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba. Wood and Brummel (2023) note that a complete mature skull of Australopithecus sediba will likely be necessary to ascertain its proper affinities.

Brummel and Wood (2023) put forward an interesting evaluation of a wide range of apes, including hominids and pliopithecids. Specific to our subject here, they suggested that a hominid grouping including Hispanopithecus, Lufengpithecus, Sivapithecus, Kenyapithecus, Ouranopithecus, Pierolapithecus, and Pongo was likely a monobaramin. This incorporates both pongines and ‘stem hominids’ (‘dryopiths’ and Kenyapithecus). Paranthropus is considered by the authors a likely holobaramin (suggested by statistical analyses in previous studies). Other australopithecines were not included in this study. (An earlier analysis suggested that Australopithecus afarensis positively correlated with chimpanzees, but Australopithecus africanus did not (Wood 2010). There may be taxonomic issues involved.)

One issue with statistical baraminology is that discontinuity itself may not be sufficient to delineate a boundary. It is certainly helpful in determining included taxa, but we cannot necessarily rule out trajectories of rapid diversification resulting in significant morphological change (e.g. Wise 2017). It might also be necessary to put together a more expansive analysis of the Hominidae itself (which may take time if not all species data is available). Support for a pongine-dryopith monobaramin provides excellent groundwork for further research. Parsimoniously, this (in conjunction with palaeobiological and biogeographic data, along with the expanding understanding of the human kind) supports not jumping to single-genus holobaraminic conclusions with fossil apes. In any case, we can look forward to seeing more fascinating research in this area.

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zoocreation

‘Great Apes’ of the Hominidae

a family of fossil and living primates

Chad Arment (2025)

stem hominids

The Ponginae

The Homininae

Creation Research on Hominids

references

2021-2025

zoocreation