Re: Strange thoughts on PN - was Re: BAD vs. BADD

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

David Marjanovic wrote:

> Indeed not. But upon hearing "mammal", my first thought is not of a whale 
> or bat either...

How about breasts?  After all, it's what the word means.  :-)

> This is true. But under the Linnaean system, drawing such lines is _doubly_ 
> arbitrary. If you draw the line at Archie in the Linnaean system, you 
> (possibly) force *Microraptor* to be a reptile, classified with the turtles 
> but not with Archie. In phylogenetic nomenclature this latter nonsense 
> drops away: you name a clade slightly bigger than Aves (Eumaniraptora, 
> say), one slightly smaller (such as Avebrevicauda), and so on...

Yes indeed.  It helps to think of phylogenetic taxonomy as a series of 
concentric circles, rather than as a Venn diagram.

Cheers

Tim