Re: small dinosaurs with feathers

[John Conway <john_conway@mac.com>]

On Sunday, June 30, 2002, at 07:50  PM, StephanPickering@cs.com wrote:

> And this is, indeed, the purpose of the taxonomic revisions being 
> formul! ! ated by Jacques Gauthier and others. In a forum such as this, 
> the word "bird" is meaningless.

"Bird" carries no less meaning than "theropod", "sauropod", 
"ceratopsid", etc. If we are not allowed to mention clades within the 
Dinosauria, then our discussions of phylogeny are going to be rather 
restricted, aren't they?

Dinosaurs are archosaurs, does that make the term "dinosaur" 
meaningless? if it comes to that, archosaurs are amniotes, amniotes are 
tetrapods, tetrapods are vertebrates.... and so on. They are all useful 
terms. The name "bird" is no less useful.

> I choose to ignore the word "bird" because extant, avialian theropods 
> cannot -- repeat: cannot -- be diagnosed without, first, recognizing 
> them as dinosaurs.

Strange, birds were recognized LONG before we even knew of the existence 
of other dinosaurs. The current phylogenetic definition of Aves does NOT 
refer to any other dinosaur, because it is node-based. Birds can be 
defined without recognizing them as dinosaurs, it has been done in the 
past.

It is perfectly acceptable to refer to clades without recognizing all 
their containing clades. Otherwise, discussion of phylogeny would be 
impossible.


John Conway, Palaeoartist

"All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde

Protosite: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/
Systematic ramblings: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/phylogenetic/