Re: BRONTOSAURUS FOREVER!

["T. Michael Keesey" <mightyodinn@yahoo.com>]

> I used the name Brontosauria for the taxon comprising sauropods and 
> prosauropods back in 1991, so there's some formal basis for calling these 
> dinosaurs brontosaurs. Unfortunately, the sister group, Segnosauria, is now 
> in Theropoda, so Brontosauria essentially becomes a junior synonym of 
> Sauropodomoprha. I think it's a better-formed name for that group than 
> Sauropodomorpha, however, and since ICZN rules do not apply at this taxonomic

"Brontosaur" is often used informally to mean "sauropod" (e.g. just about
anything by Bakker). _Sauropoda_ was defined by Wilson & Sereno using
_Plateosaurus_ as an external specifier, but this may prove to include animals
traditionally considered "prosauropods". Perhaps _Sauropoda_ could be
re-defined with more external specifiers, or re-defined as a node-based clade,
and Brontosauria could be used for the (possibly) broader stem-based clade.

For a time I used Brontosauria on my website for Clade(_Prosauropoda_ +
_Sauropoda_), using Wilson & Sereno's definitions for the clades, which boils
down to Clade(_Plateosaurus_ + _Saltasaurus_). That's another possibility.

Just some thoughts.

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=====> T. Michael Keesey <keesey@bigfoot.com>
=====> The Dinosauricon <http://dinosauricon.com>
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