RE: Microraptor hanqingi, new species from China.

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

> Do taxonomists in these other specialties care if genera are
> paraphyletic?  That's the usual justification I see
> whenever someone splits a dinosaur genus.  

The only ones that don't (as a rule-of-thumb) generally care are entomologists 
and botanists, but even there it is quite rare nowadays. In ornithology, 
justifying paraphyletic genera is decidedly fringe (can't remember when I saw 
it the last time), and for mammals it's not very different. It might be a bit 
tricky in herpetology due to the frequent incidence of hybridogenic taxa.

But overall, most taxonomists from the 1960 and onwards generations strongly 
advocate monophyletic genera.


Eike