RE: Stegosaur volume of Swiss Journal of Geosciences

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

Anthony Docimo wrote:

<> just a hunch....because that's how it was created in the first place?

[...]

then shouldn't our default assumption (at least 
until proven otherwise) be that _Ceratopsidae_ counts _Ceratops_ as a 
member?>

  1. Under the philosophical framework of phylogenetic taxopnomy, one should 
(or be forced to) include the nominative taxa in one's containing clades. 
Always.

  2. BUT ... when stability tends to conflict with usage, and the nominative 
form may fall outside the clade named for it, this tends to involve a large 
conflict of content. *Ceratops montanus* may not be a member of Ceratopsidae as 
it has been used (the clade containing the most recent common ancestor and all 
descendants thereof of *Chasmosaurus belli* and *Centrosaurus apertus*). If so, 
the usage implies otherwise.

  I would actually favor forcing *Ceratopsidae* and all coordinated ranked taxa 
(ICZN rules here) to include *Ceratops montanus* as an anchoring specifier (PC 
rules here). If this causes the clade *Ceratopsidae* to no longer include 
*Chasmosaurus belli* nor *Centrosaurus apertus*, then a new name may be used. 
Contrariwise, we may simply abandon said clade name, and use another name that 
does not involve ICZN mandated suffixes, and ignore the issue entirely. I've 
not seen this latter approach suggested (TMK), but it means simply ignoring 
previous taxonomy and kinda starting over from scratch, as all other taxonomic 
inclusive terms within this area of the tree involve ICZN mandated suffixes, 
and that IS one of the issues causing people conniptions when it comes to using 
*Ceratopsidae*.

Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
The Bite Stuff (site v2)
http://qilong.wordpress.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)





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> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:43:17 +0000
> From: keenir@hotmail.com
> To: tijawi@yahoo.com; dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: RE: Stegosaur volume of Swiss Journal of Geosciences
>
>
>
>
>
> > Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 20:30:45 -0700
> > From: tijawi@yahoo.com
> > To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> > CC: tijawi@yahoo.com
> > Subject: RE: Stegosaur volume of Swiss Journal of Geosciences
> >
> > Michael Mortimer  wrote:
> >
> > > Well the postorbital horns were quite distinctive for the
> > > time, and even now they're almost good enough to be
> > > diagnostic for Ceratopsidae. It's only through historical
> > > accident that Ceratopsidae became a node-stem triplet clade
> > > that doesn't encompass things like Zuniceratops.
>
> > But how do we know that Ceratopsidae encompasses _Ceratops_?
>

>
>
> if I literally build my house around a tree, the odds are good that the tree 
> will still be inside my house when I'm done building.
>
>
>