Re: Epanterias and Breviparopus

[pwillis@ozemail.com.au (Paul Willis)]

>
>Well, since synonymies of this sort are matters of conclusion, they
>are not necessarily final.  In fact there is often a certain amount
>of disagreement on synonymies.
>

I take your point but, in sticking with an senior synonym or, worse still,
resurecting a long dead one, the reserector must give a valid reason why
they reject the synonomising in the first place. How does Bakker jutify
this or doesn't he bother?

>Bakker is what is called a "splitter" in taxonomic parlance.  That
>is he splits organisms into more lower level groups than most other
>workers. For instnce he splits Stegosaurus into two genera!!  Thus,
>from his point of view the names are not redundant, they are names
>of diffrent entities.
>
>[Bakker is perhaps the most extreme splitter amoung the current crop
>of paleontologists, while Greg Paul is the most extreme lumper -
>just about everybody else falls somewhere in between these two].
>

Yeh, I know about splitters and lumpers, having been accused of being both
with my work on croc (no rest for the wicked!). But splitting or lumping is
a fundementally different activity than resurecting oly synonyms, unless,
ofcourse, a splitter proceeds by using spent synonyms, which is what I
gather you are saying about Bakker.

Thanks for your reply and I must add that I have been particularly
impressed by the calm and patient replies I have seen you past to other
enquiries.

Cheers, Paul

pwillis@ozemail.com.au

"Nature conceals her mysteries, not by her cunning, but by her essential
grandeur"
                                Albert Einstein