Re: China vs. USA

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 7:21 PM, John Schneiderman
<kriket-ladybug@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Remember though, the United States has had at least 50 more years of
> dinosaur fossil hunting, evaluating and in many cases clumping valid genera
> together.
> China seems to create a new genera for every find, mostly based on location.

This was a species count, though, not a genus count. (Not that there
aren't examples of synonymous species among Chinese dinosaur fossils,
but I'm not sure that it's any worse there than here in that regard.
Just look what Maidment et al. did with American _Stegosaurus_
species!)

> China
> has produced many fantastic finds. However, since China is larger in size
> than the United States, they have an advantage.

Actually, the U.S.A. is about 1.024 times as large as the People's
Republic of China, so we should have a (very slight) advantage.

Anyway, given the subjective nature of species synonymy, especially
when it comes to fossil taxa, I think it's fair to say we're "roughly
equal" and leave it at that.
-- 
T. Michael Keesey
Director of Technology
Exopolis, Inc.
2894 Rowena Avenue Ste. B
Los Angeles, California 90039
http://exopolis.com/
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