Re: Greg Paul is right (again); or "Archie's not a birdy"

[Matthew Martyniuk <martyniuk@gmail.com>]

It is a bit ambiguous compared to today's very precise definitions,
but here's what he wrote:
“the clade that is demarcated from its antecedents by the appearance
of the evolutionary novelty ‘feathers’”

As cited in Taylor, 2007.
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/pubs/taylor2007/Taylor2007-pre-phylocode-pn.pdf

Matt

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:
>> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]
>> On Behalf Of Matthew Martyniuk
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 8:22 AM
>> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
>> Subject: Re: Greg Paul is right (again); or "Archie's not a birdy"
>>
>> To be fair, this again depends on how you define Aves. The
>> oldest phylogenetic definition published for Aves is an
>> apomorphy-based on anchored on the presence of feathers
>> (Charig, 1985). In this usage (which is just as valid as any
>> other pre-PhyloCode), feathers are not only a fundamental
>> avian attribute, they are the *defining* attribute of Aves.
>>
>> (How you define 'feather' is another story).
>>
>> Matt
>
> I find it highly unlikely that Charig defined ANYTHING phylogenetically! What 
> is his actual statement? I suspect it something more
> along the line of "Aves is defined by the presence of feathers"; if so, that 
> is simply traditional pre-cladistic gradistic
> classification. On the other hand, a statement along the lines of "Aves is 
> that entire branch of the tree of life descended from the
> first feathered animal", that is a fairer claim to a phylogenetic defintion.
>
>