Re: [dinosaur] RETRACTION: Oculudentavis, new smallest known Mesozoic bird in amber from Cretaceous of Myanmar

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Gesendet:ÂSonntag, 26. Juli 2020 um 01:23 Uhr
Von:Â"Paul P" <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>

> That said, there might be a loophole. The authors could declare the specimen 
> nondiagnostic and the name a nomen dubium--

They could do that. And nobody would need to agree with them. This is taxonomy, 
not nomenclature, and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature grants 
taxonomic freedom.

Once you decide for yourself that a specimen is diagnostic, the Code tells you 
which names to use and which not to use. But it doesn't give you any hint how 
to make that decision, and it doesn't give anyone else any hint on whether they 
should agree with you. Such things are ultimately subjective; the Code is a set 
of conventions that are arbitrary but _not_ subjective, and it doesn't want to 
mix these things.

(Likewise, the International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature grants 
phylogenetic freedom. Once you decide to take a particular phylogenetic 
hypothesis as your starting point, it tells you which names to use and which 
not to use; but it doesn't give you any hint how to make that decision, and it 
doesn't give anyone else any hint on whether they should agree with you. The 
reasons are exactly the same.)

> I mean, it must not be terribly diagnostic or they would have realized it was 
> a squamate and not a bird, right?--

Having read the paper, I'm completely confident the specimen is diagnostic. 
It's not "well, this looks like a lizard"; it's obvious to me that an expert in 
lepidosaurs could figure out which kind of squamate it is, and would definitely 
find it's a species that has not been described before.

> Btw, how could Nature have initiated the retraction? Are you (Tom H) saying a 
> third party informed Nature that the specimen wasn't a bird?

The good people at Nature, in particular the responsible editor Henry Gee, can 
hardly have remained ignorant of the famous preprint that says it's a lizard. 
Once they learned of that, most likely they promptly talked to people.