Re: Spinosaurus questions and the presence of air=.

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/30/03 4:42:04 PM EST, twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com writes:

<< Might be a job for the ICZN. >>

Not really. It's now a done deal. What's so bloody difficult about just using 
Becklespinax altispinax as the name of the dinosaur species to which those 
vertebrae belong, and letting Megalosaurus/Altispinax dunkeri sink into 
well-deserved oblivion? Becklespinax is the proper and correct generic name for 
this 
taxon. Also, Huene's name "altispinax" is even attached to the vertebrae as the 
species epithet. If Huene had really wanted to create the generic name 
Altispinax for this genus, he could have done so without all that conditional 
blather in his papers. He should have ignored Megalosaurus dunkeri as worthless 
and 
explicitly made the vertebrae the holotype specimen of a new type species 
under Altispinax. By not doing that, he wound up forfeiting his name Altispinax.

Kuhn was the earliest person that I can find who >explicitly< made 
Megalosaurus dunkeri the type species of Altispinax (Huene didn't do it in 
1923, 1926, 
or 1932). This nomenclatural act therefore cannot be an error. It would be an 
error if someone later tried to change the name of the type species to 
something else (a la Rauhut, 2000). As I said before, there is no basis for 
referring 
the species Becklespinax altispinax to the genus Altispinax (a nomen dubium 
based on a single tooth now lost) under the name Altispinax altispinax.