Re: New name for Megalosaurus hesperis

[Tim Williams <tijawi@yahoo.com>]

Mike Keesey wrote:

> It's much easier than that -- just say that Spinosauroidea is an
> infraorder (or any non-family group rank -- or even just say it's
> unranked). The suffix "-oidea" appears on may taxa that are not
> superfamilies (e.g., Asteroidea).

And Archaeopterodactyloidea too, apparently.

If we take the route you propose, we have to go through the rigmarole of 
reviving the tortuous Linnaean rank system just to avoid ICZN entanglements.  
In order to coin "Infraorder Spinosauroidea" we'd have to insert arbitary ranks 
in front of each of the higher clades too (e.g., Dinosauria, Saurischia, 
Theropoda, Tetanurae).  This seems to me to be a royal pain if you just want to 
erect a taxon that embraces two or more families, but don't want a coordinate 
family level taxon.  Personally, I also would rather see an end to Linnaean 
ranks (Superorder, Order, Suborder, Infraorder, Parvorder, etc), no matter what 
the rationale.

In sauropod phylogeny there is a tendency to abandon coordinate family level 
groups in favor of taxon names that do not end in -idae, -oidea, and so on 
(e.g., Lognkosauria, Turiasauria).  I think this is a good idea, because it 
also means that these clades can shift in both position and content without the 
potential of running into certain ICZN-oriented nomenclatural trouble (e.g., 
priority of name-giving taxa; relative position of ranked taxa).

Overall, IMHO having Megalosauria or Spinosauria (or whatever) would be the 
preferred option - in this case, anyway.  Megalosauria is available (Baur, 
1891).

Cheers

Tim