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Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:44:13 +0100
From: [unknown]
To: PML <phylocode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu>
Subject: Re: PhyloCode
----- Original Message ----- =46rom: "Yisrael Asper" <yisraelasper@comcast.net> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 6:01 AM > Officially defining a dinosaur as a class > of animals that includes what would be known to a layman as a bird = is a > redefining of the word dinosaur and so should entail rejecting the = word > dinosaur as unscientific and making a new word inclusive of both li= ving > and nonliving therapods. In principle, I agree -- but in this particular case it's 30 years to= o late.=20 The first proposal to create a Class Dinosauria which included Aves w= as=20 published (in Nature!) in 1975. Especially since 1986 (when an influe= ntial,=20 more or less popular, famous book was published) paleontologists have= been=20 preaching ceaselessly that birds are dinosaurs. This has now reached = most=20 professionals, and remarkably large parts of the public as well. By the way: have a look at=20 http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/bts.php?image=3D14#cap. No,= this is=20 not a bird under most definitions of that term. :-) _Now, Reptilia is a different case._ Reptilia was defined as (I'm= =20 paraphrasing here, I think) "the most recent common ancestor of turtl= es,=20 lepidosaurs and crocodiles, and all its descendants" (thus including = birds)=20 in 1986 -- in a dissertation. Sure, it was published soon afterwards,= but=20 this was at the _beginning_ of the time when the _cladistics_ revolut= ion=20 reached vertebrate phylogenetics! This was a time when people who are= today=20 members of the ISPN published _classifications_ full of newly invente= d ranks=20 like "megafamily", "grandfamily", "mirorder", "parvorder" and the lik= e. It=20 took a lot longer till cladistics became widespread across fields as = narrow=20 as vertebrate paleontology, and longer still till the idea of phyloge= netic=20 nomenclature got more or less commonplace. Keep in mind that it still= hasn't=20 reached entomology, for example. The idea that birds should be considered dinosaurs is quite a bit old= er than=20 phylogenetic nomenclature. The book from 1986 mentioned above doesn't= even=20 mention PN. At that time, putting birds into Dinosauria was considere= d=20 identical to _removing Dinosauria from Reptilia_ and to elevating Din= osauria=20 to class or subclass status (in the latter case as a subclass of=20 Archosauria -- the name Reptilia was completely dropped by those auth= ors). It is therefore no wonder that just last Thursday I had a course at t= he=20 university in which the terms "monophyletic", "paraphyletic" and=20 "polyphyletic" were explained -- and Reptilia was used as _the exampl= e_ of a=20 paraphyletic group.=20