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Re: Quo vadis, T. rex? [long]
In a message dated 96-02-09 01:23:32 EST, pharrinj@PLU.edu (Nicholas J.
Pharris) writes:
>Difference doesn't matter to me. What matters to me (and, I imagine, to
>many other taxonomists in various fields) is relationships. I know from
>personal experience that many young potential scientists take their first
>phylogenetic lessons from phylogeny. They want to know what's related to
>what, not what some scientist thinks is "different enough to merit a
>different name". Phylogeny should, if AT ALL possible, be easily
>reconstructible from taxonomy.
Why? It sounds as if you're simply parroting cladist dogma here.
It's too bad you're not interested in differences. I will hereafter disregard
all comments on dinosaur morphology from you. :-)
Relationships are already expressed in the ancestor-descendant relation
between paraphyletic taxon and its daughter taxa. With paraphyletic taxa, you
get more: you get relationship AND morphology. This is better.