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Re: [...] Archaeopteryx 10
David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:
<That was because von Meyer wrote a) in German and b) a paper about the feather
-- in the last paragraph he goes like "oh, and a skeleton has just been
discovered which could be called *Archaeopteryx*". It's all in the archives:
von Meyer designated the London specimen, not the feather, the holotype.>
Don't be too hasty on this interpretation. It is really, really ambiguous
what von Meyer was referring to, and I've taken the premise in hand that von
Meyer was not in the habit of designating that many "holotypes", merely
collecting the feather and skeleton into a single animal, and granting the
animal as collected the name of choice. Let us not forget that Woodward helped
confuse the entire taxonomy issue by inferring that Own and von Meyer were a
little "off," used names that were never published as if they were, and
promptly misspelled them, leading to even MORE confusing taxonomy, mostly for
the London specimen.
Confusion in the literature, regardless of an interpretation of lack of such
ambiguity, required not one, but TWO acts of suppression by the ICZN separated
by 30 years due to a fortuitious find in Holland.
Cheers,
Jaime A. Headden
http://bitestuff.blogspot.com/
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
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