Re: ... and systematics Re: Musings on extinct Phyla

On Apr 30, 4:22 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pnyikos wrote:
On Apr 26, 8:10 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pnyikos wrote:
On Apr 26, 10:52 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pnyikos wrote:
On Apr 24, 10:41 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pnyikos wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
pnyikos wrote:
I"ve deleted a lot here, to which I replied in a new thread that I set
up just now:
What was the justification for commandeering "Dinosauria" instead of
inventing a term of your own?
To avoid confusion, of course.
Nonsense.
Since no change in meaning was needed,
There was a huge change in meaning, since even Romer was sure that
birds were <ahem> descended from archosaurs, and the dinosaurian
origin of Aves was widely believed even back then.
No it wasn't.

Before the triumph of cladistic ("phylogenetic") systematics, then --
unless this happened before ca. 1970.

Notice that Romer predates Ostrom's first publication on Deinonychus,
which is what is really relevant here. The notion that birds are
dinosaurs (or are descended from them, if you like) spread through the
paleontology community at about the same time cladistics did.

Romer already flirted with it, when he wrote that if Archaeopteryx had
been discovered without feathers, it could easily have been taken for
a small dinosaur.

By the
time of Gauthier's first publication, the relationships and cladistic
classification were both probably the majority view.

So no huge change in meaning.

Romer's words in _Vertebrate Paleontology_ suggest that there was no
general consensus on which archosaurs were the immediate ancestors of
birds.

[...]

My only problem with bats is that there is
no good scenario worked out for intermediates between them and pre-
chiropteran mammals, like there are between birds and pre-avian
dinosaurs.

That's the problem with small, delicate skeletons.

I said "scenario," not "series of fossils".

The small, delicate skeletons of birds did not deter people from
giving various hypothetical scenarios for Archie's ancestors
developing wings and feathers, nor even calling one hypothesized step
along the way *Proavis*.

The closest we have for bats is the hypothesized "protobats" in the
following scienceblog, and my questions and objections at the end
remain unanswered. There never were similar difficulties with
"proavis".

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2011/03/visualising_protobats.php

just a change in understanding of
what groups belonged, and since a paraphyletic group needs no name,
Nor does a clade.
It does if we want to talk about it.

No, you could give clades lots of descriptions without giving them
names.  "The crown group defined via extant mammals" is just one of
many examples.

...if we want to talk about it without clumsy circumlocutions.

You have them all the time. "Stem__________" says nothing about where
in the stem or how much is included in the stem, for instance. Even
with clades -- if you say "Mammalia" then you have the problem of
different people giving different cladistic definitions, hence
different clades.

My intended point was of course
that we don't want to talk about a paraphyletic group.

You don't.  But the author of the book I describe below does.

I wonder why. Does he explain?

I don't recall any explanation, but it seems natural to talk about
them, given the varied backgrounds of the students.

My second youngest daughter is taking a course in comparative
vertebrate anatomy, and her textbook, most recent edition 2012 [yep,
this year] is written by a non-cladophile.

Kenneth V. Kardong, Ph.D., Washington State University,
_Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution_,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 2012.

How can you tell? Pity, if true.

You've forgotten my definition of "cladophile" as someone who will not
tolerate the use of non-clades in systematics. As I explained:

Oh, he does seem to prefer cladistic classification, but he does give
both a traditional Linnean classification and a cladistic
classification in the appendix.

See, he is very tolerant.

And, surprise!  there are many more Linnean taxa than cladistic taxa
given. This is partly due to the fact that the tree of life for
mammals and birds is so tentative, nobody really knows which Linnean
orders are clades and which are not.  So rather than list some taxa
which are suspected to be paraphyletic, he leaves them out of the
cladistic classification.
That's a very silly notion.

Whose?  mine or the author's?

Both, I think. But mostly the author's.

And I don't see your point, unless it's
"Nyah, nyah, nyah".

My point is that the "victory" of you cladophiles, if it ever existed
at all, is only skin-deep.

Not a point, really. It takes time for any advance to get into textbooks.

It's an advance in your mind, just as quartz watches which need to
have batteries replaced when they quit without warning are an
"advance" over the old stem-wound watches in the minds of almost
everyone besides me, it would seem.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ... and systematics Re: Musings on extinct Phyla
    ... Since no change in meaning was needed, ... The notion that birds are ... paleontology community at about the same time cladistics did. ... you could give clades lots of descriptions without giving them ...
    (sci.bio.paleontology)
  • The meaning of "bird" WAS Re: KT boundry event
    ... I've managed to overcome the tempatation to ask him what theory of language and meaning he is using here. ... Not until Pierre Belon and others in the 16th century described the anatomy of birds, which was not used in the initial baptism, did "bird" mean a flying *feathered* organism, and of course subsequent discoveries of flightless birds meant that the extension and intension changed again. ... Linnaeus defined Aves thus: ... Since taxonomists used "Aves" with Linnaeus for their formal classifications, this amounted to the claim that Aves were Dinosaurians (dinosaurs, a term invented in the 1830s by Owen). ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Alan Feduccia again
    ... with an aerofoil cross section found only in fully volant birds; ... twisting flight in dense foliage; it has a brain and middle ear like ... If other theropods lack such a character, ... Other fields that employ cladistics as an exploratory ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Alan Feduccia again
    ... with an aerofoil cross section found only in fully volant birds; ... twisting flight in dense foliage; it has a brain and middle ear like ... If other theropods lack such a character, ... Other fields that employ cladistics as an exploratory ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Common ancestor between man and ape
    ... The words actually have to change in meaning; ... Plenty of extinct birds had teeth, ... if you say that humans are apes. ...
    (talk.origins)