Would homo sapiens and homo erectus be considered different species, or just subspecies in the same family?

Question

Would homo sapiens and homo erectus be considered different species, or just subspecies in the same family?

Answer 1

"Would homo sapiens and homo erectus be considered different species,"

Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus ARE different species.  There is not & never has been any debate on the issue.

"or just subspecies in the same family?"

I don't want to dump on you but you don't seem to know what these terms mean.  The wiki page on scientific classification (first link below) will help you get up to speed if you take a minute to read it.

Aida & Earwax make some good points.  On the other hand, the posters who insist that there are no human subspecies are talking politics, NOT science.  For reasons of multicult dogma, the pc left has been trying to shut down research into human genetics for decades.

Barrow-Wight

Answer 2

Erectus almost certainly represented different species.  It, like Homo habilis, is probably used as a grab bag for related species or fossils.

Answer 3

They ARE in the same family (Hominidae) and they are also different species.  The branch that lead to H. erectus and H. sapiens occured about 1.4 million years ago from H. ergaster.

Answer 4

According to their names, they would be different species of the genus homo.  Th e first word of a scientific name designates the genus, and the second the species.  Thus for a while, after anthropologists determined that Neanderthals were more like us than had been originally thought but before DNA testing showed that they were not closely  related to us, some were calling modern humans "homo sapiens sapiens" and Neanderthals "homo sapiens neanderthalensis," indicating by that terminology that they were simply another branch of our species.  Since the DNA results, I believe that science has reverted to the original nomenclature of  "homo sapiens" and "homo neanderthalensis"--two species of the same genus.  

So in any case, homo erectus belonged to a different species from us.

Answer 5

Sub-species do not technically exist in the taxonomy, but that's not relevant here (thankfully). The nomenclature says that they are different species, and the skeletons are pretty different, among hominids anyway. Probably a just conclusion.

Answer 6

My understanding is that because of the naming they would classed as different species, although I doubt there is enough data available to sure.  

If the scientists concerned with its naming had felt it was a subspecies the would have named it: homo sapiens erectus.

Answer 7

There are no such beings as sub-species.!  Any other being that is not a human belongs to a different species. The look of a human tells you from which part of the earth he comes by his colouring, his hair, his eyes etc. It does not make him a different species. PS.  aida is talking absolute codswallop.

Answer 8

Believe it or not, there is actually considerable theoretical debate about what constitutes a 'species'.  A strict evolutionary definition would be akin to 'breeding group', but many people object to this on the simple grounds that some animals are capable of producing viable offspring from interspecies mating. Evolutionarily speaking, this definition would require that these two distinct breeding populations be classified as the same species.  

Paleontologists use a statistical technique called cladistics to produce proxy data which summarizes the divergence of one species from another - based on measurement and description of fossils.  However, discussing "clades" as opposed to "species" doesn't carry the same weight and does not really clarify the issue.  

Homo erectus, however, is so significantly different in terms of skeletal morphology from Homo sapiens sapiens that it is very unlikely an erectus and sapiens could reproduce successfully.  Unfortunately, any such statement is, at best, an educated guess.  

Bottom line - they are probably different species - hence they are given the same Genus name (Homo) to indicate their similarity and a different species name (erectus/sapiens) to denote the difference.

Answer 9

Different species.

If we could only find part of their DNA, even chromosome number....we would then be able to prove they could or could not mate and produce young.

Different species...for now.