Message 2003-02-0006: Re: New Dinosauricon Taxon Pages: _Therizinosauria_

Sat, 01 Feb 2003 08:25:04 -0800 (PST)

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Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 08:25:04 -0800 (PST)
From: "Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>
To: dinosaur@usc.edu, PhyloCode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Cc: david.marjanovic@gmx.at
Subject: Re: New Dinosauricon Taxon Pages: _Therizinosauria_

David Marjanovi (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<So in short you argue for a unique "nomen primum" (called praenomen by
Flynn et al.) for every species? Maybe not a bad idea. Except maybe for
the flood of new names that will sweep over the insects. Or the plants:
the genus *Ficus* has 800 species...>

   Lest we misunderstand, the practical method of this is for fossils, not
living species, which I wrote in the hinter end of the post. But the
system works just as well for extant taxa (see Brochu, 1999) in which the
names we use for superspecific taxa may be exaptive for more inclusive
clades. For the subspecies of *Ficus*, *Ficus* would become just a clade
containing all extent organisms closer to the type of the species (and
discarding "type species" as useless) than to any other taxon [some
specifiers would be good, given the phylogeny, but I don't study plants].

   For fossil taxa, the effect of species nomenclature would be far less
problematic, and for well-recognized polyspecific "genera", each of these
species attains a distinct nomen that distinguishes it easily from one
another. A _great_ example is the (current) method of removing species
from the name *Megalosaurus* that are not synonymous with *bucklandii*.
Another would be the several species included in *Apatosaurus* or
*Iguanodon* or *Diplodocus*. *Iguanodon atherfieldensis* would then be
*Wightiguanodon* (and a perfect contrast to the fossils from Bernissart)
or some such name that would be distinguishing from the Belgian material
that is not *atherfieldensis* and cannot be referred to *bernissartensis*.

   Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

   Little steps are often the hardest to take. 
We are too used to making leaps in the face of 
adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do. 
We should all learn to walk soft, walk small, 
see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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