RE: Sauropodz r kewl WAS silly ramble

[Anthony Docimo <keenir@hotmail.com>]

> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:09:12 +0200
> From: david.marjanovic@gmx.at
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Sauropodz r kewl WAS: silly conversation on 2012 US presidential 
> race
> 
> > (Everyone here who's taken a class in one of them, raise your hand.
> > How about both?)
> 
> I had six years of Latin. Mostly useless translations of literature. 
> That wasn't a choice, it's a prerequisite for being allowed to study at 
> a university in Austria. Yes, still; we can't simply let the Occident 
> fall, now can we?
> 
> No Greek, but it's still available in a few schools. Apparently, the end 
> of compulsory Greek somehow didn't make the Occident fall down. Hmmmm.
> 
> > (Well, that or dinosaur paleontologists could stop putting every new
> > species in its own genus, already!)
> 
> I think they should (at least for the most part) stop pretending to 
> recognize species at all.

 

 but then wouldn't the Genus be the new LITUs?

(with people then saying about genera what people now say about species)

 

> To most of the fossil record, only the most 
> boring morphological species concepts can be applied;

 

 While exciting things might help on the recruitment drives, science doesn't 
depend on excitement for its survival - if it did, we might have to throw out 
the Scientific Method.

("we have to do that experiment again? borrrring")

 

 

> you might as well 
> call them LITUs* instead of species. The only problem is that the ICZN 
> forces everyone to pretend to recognize species, because an organism 
> can't bear a name at all if it's not referred to a species.

 

or a subspecies, but point taken.

 

Though haven't those ICZN rules helped us all thus far?  Not only do they allow 
us to carry on a conversation (if I say "tigers are the best cats," which 
tigers do I mean - the Latin American ones, or the Asian ones?)...but they also 
keep the splitters from going berserk (as well as everyone who wants to give a 
new name to everything they find)

 

He||, everything in PhyloCode will have to be named (unless its not to be 
spoken, in which case diagrams will suffice)


> 
> * Least Inclusive Taxonomic Units. The smallest recognizable clades (at 
> any given moment/state of advancement of science).                            
>