Re: Gaia theropod follow-up: a "new" phylogeny

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/10/00 0:01:31 AM EST, jeffmartz@earthlink.net writes:

<< If the synapomorphy wars bother you, try taking apart a few analyses
 character by character to try to understand how they work. >>

I have done this on a few occasions just to see what it might be like to do 
so, but taking apart an analysis that involves, say, 350 characters spread 
among 100 genera, could take >years< that I simply don't have to devote to 
what probably will, in the end, prove to be just a futile, pointless exercise 
(since twenty more phylogenies will have been generated in the same period of 
time). What bothers me about this situation is that cladistic analysis seems 
to be turning some paleontologists into obsessive-compulsive 
character-finders who set aside their own good judgment in favor of a few 
data-crunching algorithms of questionable validity.

With respect to Theropoda, cladistic analysis hasn't turned up anything 
strikingly new and basically confirms Barsbold's 1983 phylogeny, which was 
done without cladistics, the "old fashioned way." Only Carnosauria has 
changed significantly, and Huene already had tyrannosaurs in Coelurosauria 
back in the 1920s. Placing birds within Theropoda was done by Ostrom, again, 
the "old fashioned way." Despite several analyses involving numerous 
"characters" and taxa, we still don't know how many of the major subgroups 
within it are interrelated. I don't think this information is even 
retrievable from the present fossil record of Theropoda: We need to find some 
good specimens of key transitional early theropods in order to resolve their 
phylogeny through the noise of convergence and homoplasy.