Re: Synapsids are NOT reptiles!

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

> No, no, no, no, no!!  For about ten years now, the movement has been on to
> use cladistic definitions of amniote (& other!) taxa.  Under the new
> definitions, Reptilia is defined as the most recent ancestor of turtles,
> lepidosaurs, and archosaurs, and all of that ancestor's descendants.  This
> EXCLUDES the Synapsida from Reptilia, and raises some important points.  For
> example, uricoteley, enhanced color acuity, "reptilian" scales, and so forth
> were probably never present in Dimetrodon and it's ilk.

     I'm a little bit hazey about the way cladistics assigns terminology.  I 
was under the impression that not saying mammalian 
ancestors were reptiles was simply a matter of terminology, but that if 
you went back afr enough you could find what probably be called a reptile 
except that it was a mammal ancestor, so "technically" you couldn't CALL 
it that.  However, here you seem to be saying that the line that led to 
mammals came straight from amphibians (oops, excuse me.  I meant basal 
tetrapods), independant of "reptiles", and that all the synapsid 
modifications for dry land, such as a skin that wouldn't dry out 
(presumably with SOME kind of scales) developed independantly from 
"reptiles" starting with those first sem-aquatic critters.  
     What does cladistics have to say about, say, oue WAY earliest 
ancestors, the Monera (or whatever they are these days).  Are we 
considered a part of this group because we are descended from Monerans?  
How about fish?  I would think that unless those marine and freshwater 
critters that led to tetrapods was an example of amazing covergant 
evolution starting with those basal vertebrates, you would have to say 
we are descended from fish.
     Getting on to what this means for dinosaurs, I've heared people say 
that birds HAVE to be considered dinosaurs because they are descended 
from them (or something like that), as though no matter how innovative 
and unique you got, you would still be considered the same type of 
critter as your ancestors.  However, it has always sounded to me 
that the whole labelling business (birds ARE dinosars, humans not from 
reptiles and fish) was more of a case of toMAEto toMAHto than something with 
real implications toward restoration of these extinct forms.  The only way I 
see 
that we couldn't be called reptiles or fish or bacteria if if those 
ancesters of ours were developed those reptilian or fishlike traits TOTALLY 
INDEPENDANT of true reptiles and fish and bacteria, and that resemblance 
to thise forms was simply an amazing example of covergent evolution 
(or independant development of life, in the case of bacteria).  
     I am admittadly ignorant of cladistic terminology, so please clear 
this up for me.

LN Jeff