Re: Feduccia's delusion

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

HP philidor11 wrote

> Why all the emphasis on the impoverished record of long-extinct animals?
> Why make paramount a few small, arguable distinctions when obvious
> differences are in front of you every day?

Because in reality all distinctions were small at first, and they appear
obvious now only because the "intermediates" have died off. This is sort of
an artificial state. Once you try to classify fossils, you often can't find
the "obvious differences" you are used to from the living.

But that is not what I wanted to say. I want to question why crown-groupers
and "stem-groupers" want to anchor all well-known names on the living,
contrary to the usage of several decades, maybe a century. Not a very strong
argument, but still an argument IMHO.

HP Eric Lurio wrote

> Because mosts biologists work with the living, perhaps?

While true, I fail to see how this is much of an argument. "Nothing makes
sense in biology, except in the light of evolution", said Dobzhansky, a
neontologist. Well, let's look at evolution, let's not ignore the fossils.
Biology is inherently 4D, not 3D.

> When it comes to
> archosaurs, crocs and birds are all there is for the last 65 million
years.

Yep. So what? If you look instead at the last 66 Ma, or the last 65.5 Ma,
you get a very different picture.

> Classification originated with the living creatures of world. Fish and
fowl,
> reptiles and mammals. Each are distinct and seperate. As David said, very
> distant groups.

True. And then came Darwin. And then came those who showed that crocodiles
are more closely related to birds than to lizards, and lizards more closely
to birds than to turtles (unless of course the geneticists are right, then
it's the other way round), so traditional Reptilia is an artificial group
anyway.

> True, there have been major revisions over the years, like the end of
> _Pachydermata_,

(OK, Pachydermata was dissolved so long ago -- 100 years? 150 years? -- that
it doesn't count. But I don't understand your argument.)

> but then again, there's far more to look at in modern
> critters than in fossils.

True with very few exceptions. I won't doubt that. Nevertheless looking only
at the living can mislead. You know that important synapomorphy of
monotremes, the poison spurs in the hindlegs of males? *Zhangheotherium*
(closer to us than to the monotremes) has it, too, so it may be a
synapomorphy of mammals rather than monotremes. And suddenly nothing is as
distinct and separate and obvious as it looks like from today's biased view.

Anyway, sorry that I began this discussion, this is the wrong place for it,
let's wait for the companion volume(s) to the PhyloCode, respectively let's
try to directly influence it.