Re: Terrapins: At Well Past 100, They're in the Mood

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> But there are hazards to letting the weather determine your sex.
> A few years ago Spotila and Penn Veterinary School paleontologist Peter 
> Dodson wrote a paper suggesting that temperature may have determined the 
> sex of dinosaurs.
> When a catastrophic event altered the climate 65 million years ago, 
> turtles managed to adjust, perhaps evolving a lower female-producing 
> temperature, while dinosaurs could have gone years without hatching 
> females. If that was the case, Spotila says, "the last dinosaur was a 
> frustrated male."

Here we have the other discussion. The good Professor Spotila simply applies 
logic:

Reptiles let their sex be determined by temperature.
Dinosaurs are reptiles.
Therefore dinosaurs let their sex be determined by temperature.

But his premises are trash, and the Linnaean system prevents him from seeing 
this. See? This is how paraphyletic groups are positively misleading.