RE: Stegosaur volume of Swiss Journal of Geosciences

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Looks quite interesting.  However, in his abstract Galton writes "Stegosaurus 
armatus Marsh 1877, based on a partial tail and a very large dermal plate from 
the Morrison Formation (Late Jurassic) of Morrison, Wyoming, USA, is a nomen 
dubium." and "The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) 
will be petitioned to designate S. stenops Marsh 1887 as the new type species 
of Stegosaurus Marsh 1877 in order to conserve Stegosauria Marsh 1877 and 
Stegosauridae Marsh 1880 (also Stegosauroidea, Stegosaurinae)."  This seems 
like the same flawed rationale used when Titanosauridae was killed by Wilson 
and Upchurch (2003) because Titanosaurus was declared a nomen dubium.  Yet the 
ICZN says nothing about families needing to be based on diagnostic taxa, it 
just says a taxon should be "well known" if it has a family-level group named 
after it.  Not to mention the ICZN has no bearing on Stegosauria at all, so 
that was pointless to bring up.

Mickey Mortimer

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> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:59:19 -0400
> From: tholtz@umd.edu
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Stegosaur volume of Swiss Journal of Geosciences
>
> Howdy,
>
> Stegosaurs: everyone knows 'em, everyone loves 'em, no one studies 'em. Or
> at least that's what you might think from a lot of the dino literature
> lately.
>
> In order to counteract that, a special issue of the Swiss Journal of
> Geosciences (http://www.springerlink.com/content/1661-8726/) based on last
> year's conference on Stegosauria.
>
> I do not have access to most of the papers in question, but they sound
> intriguing.
>
> Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
> Office: Centreville 1216
> Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
> Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
> Fax: 301-314-9661
>
> Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
> Fax: 301-314-9843
>
> Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Department of Geology
> Building 237, Room 1117
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20742 USA
>