Re: Eponymous Taxa [was: RE: new _Scleromochlus_ ref]

["John R. Hutchinson" <jrhutch@socrates.berkeley.edu>]

>Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 10:12:16 -0600 (CST)
>Date-warning: Date header was inserted by TTACS.TTU.EDU
>From: "Jonathan R. Wagner" <znc14@TTACS.TTU.EDU>
>
>        Anyway, back to Ornithosuchia... well, much as I love it, I think it
>may have to go. The sad thing is, it really is an appropriate name, it
>simply suffers from the unfortunate problem of not including the taxon it is
>named for. Ornithometatarsi [sic?] is, IMHO, an unaesthetic and cumbersome
>name. D'you suppose there is already a name available which might be
>construed to have priority?

I'm not a big fan of Ornithosuchia as the name for the sister stem to
Pseudosuchia within Archosauria either.  However it is worth pointing out
that the phylogenetic position of Ornithosuchidae is far from resolved.
Many workers (e.g. Parrish, Benton, Sereno, and more) have recently argued
that they are within Crurotarsi, yet there are still a few good characters
(e.g. in pelvis + femur, etc.) linking them with ornithodirans as Gauthier
'84 originally contended.  Crurotarsan phylogeny is a mess (outside
Crocodylomorpha especially).  More work, more specimens are badly needed.
I'd say that a "consensus" placement for Ornithosuchidae is in a trichotomy
with Crurotarsi + Ornithodira/Avemetatarsalia.

Avemetatarsalia: nope, no other published PT name available (except our
whipping boy Ornithosuchia).

                                --John R. Hutchinson