Re: Turtles and Crocodylians are not Reptiles - no? What are they?

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 9:26 PM, Tim Williams
<twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The most recent morphological/fossil data place whales near the base of the 
> Artiodactyla.  The analysis of Thewissen &c from late 2007 places Cetacea as 
> the sister taxon to the Raoellidae, a group of aquatic basal artiodactyls.  
> Thus, although the Cetacea come out as artiodactyls, they are not at all 
> close to hippopotamids, and are in fact outside the crown Artiodactyla.

Wouldn't it be better to restrict Artiodactyla to the crown and just
say that 1) cetaceans are not artiodactyls (but are their extant
sister group), and 2) raoellids are very basal stem-cetaceans?

Or is Artiodactyla apomorphy-based?

(No Whippomorpha? Kind of sad....)
-- 
T. Michael Keesey
Director of Technology
Exopolis, Inc.
2894 Rowena Avenue Ste. B
Los Angeles, California 90039
http://exopolis.com/
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