Archaeopteryx species -- was RE: Bambiraptor complete!

["T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Williams, Tim wrote:

> By the way, I have no ideological objection to there being more than one
> archaeopterygid genus or species from Solnhofen; _A. bavarica_ should
> probably be kept as a distinct species, IMHO.  But after reading papers by
> Howgate and Elzanowski, I'm not convinced that _Jurapteryx_ and
> _Wellnhoferia_ are good genera, particularly in light of the allometric
> studies on _A. lithographica_.

Situations like this almost make me wonder if we should use species at all
for fossil taxa. Seems to me we can't really identify species for extinct
organisms, only clades. Of course, maybe that depends on which of the many
definitions of "species" you use....

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