Re: CLADISTICS AND PALEONTOLOGIST(S) OF THE CENTURY

[chris brochu <cbrochu@fmppr.fmnh.org>]

>
>Most workers aren't going to bother plowing through someone else's character
>matrix when it's so much easier to produce an alternative one. How many
>dinosaur-taxonomy papers have you seen recently that take apart a previous
>publication and critique each character in the previous publication's matrix
>to set things right? One? Two?

Actually, among croc workers, the number is closer to the high teens -
impressive, since the number of croc workers is not in the high teens.
And, most dinosaur cladistic analyses I've seen have made heavy reference
to older analyses - in effect, they do represent reanalyses.

Remember, modern phylogenetics is more than just dinosaur analyses - it is
unfair to criticize a whole field of endeavor because a few papers for one
small subset of living organisms are not perfectly done.

chris

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Christopher Brochu, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Department of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History
Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road
Chicago, IL  60605  USA

phone:  312-922-9410, ext. 469
fax:  312-922-9566

cbrochu@fmppr.fmnh.org