Re: Coelurosaur phylogeny

["Mickey Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com>]

I knew Jaime couldn't resist trying to pass off his personal opinions as
taxonomic fact...
He wrote-

>   Though it hasn't been used much, Tyrannoraptora was not named in a
> graphic tree that represented an idea, but the result of a specific set of
> data that provided an arrangement. The thesis behind the Naish and Martill
> figure has never been explained, and its use has never been elaborated on.
> If one would recall the extensive debate of naming taxa, especially those
> that are not species or "genera" in figures, then using Ji and Ji's
> undefined or diagnosed or in anyway explained usage of "Dromavialae" to
> defend the use of another quoted name as being unquoted, then applied to a
> structure to which has not been defined, then one has defined a strawman.
> By using one to defend the other, and trying to support it with defined
> and better used names like Tyrannoraptora and Theropoda, is in this
> person's mind a fallacy.
>   The name remains in quotes, as it has never been explicitly named,
> utilized, defined, diagnosed, or applied in any matter IN PRINT other than
> a label in a figure. This is horrible taxonomy, jumping on names that
> appear in any manner. Take for instance the popular use of an unpublished
> name "Huaxia..." that will likely never see print because of the public
> discussion and use of it.

The point of listing Dromavialae was not to make a strawman, but to
represent a wide variety of "officiality", from rarely used undefined taxa
to commonly used well defined ones.  Tyrannoraptora is intermediate (well
defined, rarely used).  All are equally valid, as there is no official
ruleset for validity of higher taxonomic names, despite your PERSONAL
OPINION that such names require explicit definition, diagnosis or use
outside of figures.  "Horrible" though it may be in your opinion, it is not
improper or incorrect.
Incidentally, I would classify Sereno's topologies more as "graphic trees
that represent ideas" than "results of a specific set of data that provided
an arrangement."  Sure they are generated by a data set, but this data was
undoubtedly set up to generate the specific topology (which could be done to
make ANY clade one wished, so is not a good way to validate a taxon).  No
one gets such high CI's in theropod phylogenetics without trying to.
And judging by Hwang et al.'s SVP 2001 presentation, "Huaxiasaurus" (NGMC
98-5-003) was not described because the specimen is more poorly preserved
than initially expected.

Mickey Mortimer