Re: birds and/or/with dino's

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

> Yep, my mistake.  I meant to say Cete would include both stem- and  
> crown-Cetacea (Cete = pan-Cetacea), and Paraxonia would include both  
> stem- and crown-Artiodactyla (Paraxonia = pan-Artiodactyla).  Either  
> of these clades might also come to include mesonychians as well.

Or we could just use Paraxonia for Artiodactyla + Cetacea (assuming  
cetaceans aren't crown artiodactyls, as I increasingly suspect they  
are).  Doesn't Paraxonia also include things like mesonychians, anyway?

Clade names like Cetartiodactyla, formed as mashups of two existing  
names, have always rubbed me the wrong way.  In what sense are pigs,  
camels, fin whales, and spectacled porpoises "whale-even-toed"?  What  
does that even mean?

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Nicholas J. Pharris