Re: Feduccia's delusion

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> My name for the clade of modern birds would be Aves, the Latin name; my
name
> for the stem group that is all animals more closely related to Aves than
to
> modern crocs would be Ornithes, the Greek name.

I think this would, in practice, only add one more name to... what do we
have now? Ornithosuchia, Avemetatarsalia, Avipodes...
On the other hand, I still think the recognition of such clades is more
often than not useful. But IMHO such names should bear standardized
suffixes, just like Panarthropoda and Holotheria, just like ichnogenera
almost always end in -pus, -pes, -ichnium, -ichnus and suchlike and oogenera
end in -oolithus, rarely -ovum.

Why all that emphasis on the living? Why should we let today's impoverished
fauna, where there's nothing left between very distant groups, e. g.
Crocodylia and Neornithes, limit taxonomy?