Re: Why Thulborn's ideas on dinosaur polyphyly are wrong

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

> This is something that mystifies me. What's the use in chipping at the
> consensus if you don't have an alternative to express? If we were to
> accept, say, that the sister-group relationship between saurischians
> and ornithischians is poorly supported, we'd still think they're
> sisters till he presents a better supported arrangement.

This confusion of "there is little or no evidence for it" with "there is 
evidence against it" was considered normal in the precladistic age (and is 
still considered normal in most of historical linguistics, which is in the 
precladistic age with very few exceptions). It's simply the weight of 
tradition.