The Future is Here! (Re: Apomorphy-based definitions...)

["Nicholas Gardner" <n_gardner637@hotmail.com>]

> From: "David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
> Reply-To: david.marjanovic@gmx.at
> To: "The Dinosaur Mailing List" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Subject: Re: Apomorphy-based definitions - who needs them?
> Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 00:57:09 +0100
>
> > Two years ago the manuscript of a new high school biology
> > textbook had a cladogram, and the synapomorphy for birds was "feathers".
>
> A high school biology textbook with a cladogram!?! Hey! The future has
> begun! :-)

It's about time for the future!  My text (Addison & Wesley 1996) has a 
"phylogenetic" tree that shows birds closer to mammals than to reptiles 
("Haemothermia" or something like that).  So trees are appearing but...they 
are really off-base.  The dinosaur section contains a four-fingered 
tyrannosaur(!) with a chunky head and a sprawling apatosaur that is happily 
mucking about in a pond.  Then the following page says that some scientists 
feel that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded.  Couldn't they see it was so 
obvious from the illustrations?  :-)

/------------------------\
|____Nicholas_Gardner____|
|n_gardner637@hotmail.com|
| n_gardner637@yahoo.com |
\------------------------/

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