Re: Birds and [...]

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

----- Original Message -----
From: <philidor11@snet.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 9:18 PM
Subject: RE: Birds and pornography and Caenagnathiformes (toothlessness)


> Modifying your statement to assist in making my point:
> <The fossil record tells us that the divisions between one Cla[de]
> and the next
> disappear as you go back in time.  This undermines the very concept
> of a
> "Cla[de]".>
> and, I agree, the clade concept is weakened by looking first
> at the smallest distinctions.

Then I'm interested in what you think the concept of a clade is. I think
that concept is "a holophyletic group of organisms", however similar or
dissimilar they are. When Myxozoa (you know, those almost unicellular
parasites) turn out to be cnidarians, _then so be it_.

> Classes are certainly more useful because they do not relay on
> retrograde analyses, but on immediate observation of clear differences.
>  They are unquestionable and essential, no doubt about it.

Unquestionable? Then _what on the planet_ have Linnaean systematists been
doing since 1753? They've argued endlessly whether certain living organisms
should be put into classes of their own, rather than, say, subphyla or
subclasses! Please explain "essential", I don't understand that in this
context.

> We know that the distinctions between birds, for instance, and
> some representatives of another large group called dinosaurs
> would disappear as we went back in time.

Phew... dinosaurs _are_ back in time. Why would you lump *Caudipteryx* with
*Triceratops* rather than with *Sapeornis*???

> Therefore, we won't
> look back in time in identifying groups.

We woooon't! :-} We'll amputate our eyes and...
And we'll _ignore_ all fossils, and classify them with _rocks_. Or what!?!
Sorry, but I really don't understand what you want to do. Pure phenetics
only of extant organisms? ~:-|

> We'll also avoid making worms too prominent in a classification
> system.

How do you mean? ~:-|

> And if some people want to be stuck in their labs all day feeling
> around bony knobs like phrenological pathologists to determine
> which small subsubsubgroup an extinct animal belongs in, okay,
> but I'd rather be out with the traveler on horseback, tromping
> worms.

Perfectly fine, but then, ermp, ermmm... why _do_ you discuss taxonomy? ~:-|

>  The New Soviet Man and a few other constructs assuming people
> would change their way of thinking when they hear some insights,
> all these have faded away.  I'm betting that cladistics will
> also fade long before human nature changes appreciably.

Why should human nature change so that people can understand cladistics? I'm
slightly bewildered with that comparison.