Re: thoughts on which nodes to name

["Mickey_Mortimer11" <Mickey_Mortimer11@email.msn.com>]

David Marjanovic wrote-

> The Phylocode doesn't like such big additions to traditionally
paraphyletic
> groups to make them monophyletic. I really think Huxley's 19th century
terms
> Theropsida and Sauropsida should be used for those amniotes which are
closer
> to mammals or birds, respectively, which was the author's intent AFAIK, at
> least that of a certain Goodrich, 1916.

Birds aren't that big of an addition.  Just like calling all mammals
cynodonts.  I also like Sauropsida and Theropsida for the stems, but
Reptilia should have precidence over the former if they turn out to be
synonymous.

> Mesosaurs, BTW, are not synapsids/theropsids*, they are real anapsids,
close
> to Bolosauridae, Procolophonidae, Pareiasauridae etc. and probably
turtles.
> When turtles don't belong there the clade should be called Proganosauria.
> Just forgot the ref, I think somewhere in Palaeontologia Africana in 1999.

Yeah, I was going to mention that, but forgot.

> > Everything in Reptilia has always been
> > viewed as a reptile for at least the last century,
>
> For less than the latter half or so of the last century.

No, I said all currently recognized reptiles have been seen as reptiles for
the last century, not that everything recognized as a reptile through in
that time still is defined as one.

> It is not entrenched in the public community. Go ask someone about the
> difference between reptiles and amphibians, or about whether salamanders
are
> reptiles or amphibians. Most people I've heard risking a statement thought
> that salamanders were lizards (and made the impression that they'd have
> believed me anything because I looked like I knew about such ivory-tower
> vocabulary). Yes, people do usually learn it in school, but if so, then
> very, very shortly -- I've never been examined about that, IIRC -- , and
by
> far most forget it immediately.

The term "reptile" is entrenched in the public, as is amphibian.  Just
because most can't tell the difference doesn't mean they don't think such
things exist.  I suppose you could just as well argue that the public also
knows what worms and fish are, but this particular group has been pretty
easy to make into a clade.

Mickey Mortimer