Some continue to observe the two hominid genera suggested by Howell in 1960, but others place some of the australopithecines in a separate genus called Paranthropus , and still others add an earlier group called Ardipithecus. Some put praegens into Australopithecus and some into a new classification, Homo antiquus, but most don't recognize praegens as a separate species at all. There is no central authority that rules on these things. The only way a name becomes accepted is by consensus, and there is often very little of that.[qh]

有的專家繼續按照豪威爾于1960年提出的兩大屬人科動物來進行研究，但是有的將某些南方古猿單獨列屬，并冠以傍人屬的名稱，還有的又增加了一個年代更早的地猿。有的人將praegens歸于南方古猿，有的人將其歸人新的古人種。但是大多數人根本不承認praegens是一個單獨的種。沒有任何一個眾望所歸的權威來統一大家的意見，一個名稱為大家所接受的惟一途徑是所有人都不持異議，可是這往往很難得以實現。[qh]

[qh]

伊恩·塔特薩爾[qh]

A big part of the problem, paradoxically, is a shortage of evidence. Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. "You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up," Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones.[qh]
然而在更大的程度上，問題的癥結還在于證據的缺乏。這是自相矛盾的。自從人類起源以來，有幾十億人（或類人動物）曾經生活過，每一個都把一點兒不同的基因遺傳給整個人類。在數量如此巨大的人類當中，我們對于史前人類的了解憑借的僅僅是5000人左右的往往是極其支離破碎的遺骸。當我問紐約美國自然史博物館館員伊恩·塔特薩爾，全世界已發現的有關人科動物和早期人類的化石總量是多少時，這位留著一臉大胡子，待人親切和善的館員這樣說：“如果你不怕弄得一團槽，你可以把它們通通裝在一輛小卡車的后部。”[qh]