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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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