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RE: Shoehorning (Augury and Alvarezsauria)
I heard that lots of times, Tim. It's the fault of expanding data
sets. If *only* it were that simple. The plesion concept (proposed by a
cladist IIRC) handles expanding data sets quite nicely, but without all the
cladistic side-effects.
And if you don't believe me about destability in cladistic
classifications, then read the words of Norman Platnick (a cladist). This
is a nice little speech he gave this past December, entitled "Cladograms to
Classifications: The Road to DePhylocode". If this link doesn't work, just
enter the word dephylocode (pronounced DEFILE-o-code) into your favorite
search engine, and it should bring this link and also a link to the pdf
version.
http://www.systass.org/meetings/agm-address-dec2001.html
And by the way, I myself "shoehorn" when there is good evidence for
doing so. I classified pentastomid worms (once in their own phylum) as a
crustacean Order within Class Branchiurea (which also includes fish lice and
perhaps the Cambrian Facivermids as well).
And I shoehorned Order Opabiniida into Class Anomalocarea, even though
Whittington and others were insisting their similarities were convergent.
New fossil material is showing Whittington got it wrong. The "weird
wonders" are indeed getting properly placed, and aren't nearly as weird as
Gould made them out to be.
So I plan to do my "Cassandra" thing (as you call it) as long as my
success rate holds up. My advice is free of charge, and you can take it or
leave it. Or you can complain and perhaps get me banned from posting here
further. I have plenty to work on besides dinosaurs and birds, so I am not
going to worry about it. C'est la vie. Just don't put too much faith in
taxonomic groupings just because it came from "professionals" and comes
neatly wrapped in a package marked "most parsimonious".
----- Ken Kinman
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