Re: Coelurosaur phylogeny

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

Jaime Headden wrote-

>   The point of my post was to point out the use of a name used in a
> _figure_ as being anything applicable to any clade, when there is no
> statement accompanying that defines its useage, either a diagnosis,
> indication of content, or definition (the last in the sense of PT). The
> general usage by word of mouth has led to the idea of what the
> Oviraptorosauria + Therizinosauroidea clade can be called, and the use of
> this in a figure mentally being put together ... but the idea must be
> emplaced at once, not through word-of-mouth, in a paper to usage. Marsh
> delineated very clearly what he was calling Theropoda, as did Sereno for
> Tyrannoraptora. None were named in figures originally, exclusively in the
> original paper, and only in the figure.
>
>   Both "Dromavialae" and "Enigmosauria" are not even nomina nuda, they are
> simply useless, inapplicable names. Get them with a published definition,
> and this may change.

While I agree it is preferrable to have a written definition for a clade
(diagnoses are comparatively useless due to their lack of stability), it's
not an official rule that this must occur before a clade name is used.  I
fail to see the difference between indication of content in a figure versus
in text.  Surely one is as good as the other.  Though I don't have the
reference in question, I'm betting Naish et al. (2001) indicate that
segnosaurs and oviraptorosaurs are in the Enigmosauria, while
tyrannosauroids, ornithomimosaurs, troodontids, dromaeosaurs and birds are
not.  Further definition is not imperative at this point, the only agreed on
"stem enigmosaur" being YPM 1996/1997.  If Enigmosauria is node-based, it's
their sister group.  If it's stem-based, it's the basalmost member.
Neither Dromavialae nor Enigmosauria are nomina nuda, that term being
applied to genus and lower-level clades only at ths point.  Any higher-level
concept of nomen nudum would probably require a different ruleset for
determination.
I could see your point if Enigmosauria were simply listed in the text as
some random clade that taxon X belongs to, but Naish et al. provides quite a
bit of context.  Not that the name would be invalid in the former case, but
it would be more difficult to justify use with such limited information on
content.

Mickey Mortimer