Re: Therizinosauria Cladogram

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

George Olshevsky (dinogeorge@aol.com) wrote:

<Well, nobody has even >published< the name Therizinosauria yet, let alone
defined the taxon.>

  Published, but not defined. Maryanksa, 1997, and Barsbold, 1997, in two
of the three big books of '97, both use it and its vernacular form. The
name is attributable to the former by priority of about two months, I
believe. I could be wrong. It was never explicity named, as in "n. tax.,
Therizinosauria" to include a diagnosis. This is an example of how a
vernacular usage may have become a formal taxon by default. See in
"therizinosaurs", short for "therizinosauroids" which continues to be used
to include *Beipiaosaurus*, though it's excluded by definitions of
Therizinosauroidea.

<You might say the original definition was modified by the addition of the
newly described genera. After all, that's what taxa are defined for in
biology: to be used, not to be discarded when a new taxonomic fashion or a
new genus comes along.>

  I think without explicit enumeration of content, this is a broad
statement. Otherwise, many other names can become broader by content than
to the explicit definition applied to them later.

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/