Re: PDF-request: Original description of Lagosuchus and/or Marasuchus

[David Peters <davidpeters@att.net>]

B.Parker wrote:

Again maybe this has been done and just not published.  Sorry, but if you
want faster results you are going to have to do it yourself for now. Simply
demanding grad students to do it doesn't cut it, especially since you are
the one who is explicitly questioning all of the existing hypotheses.
Better get those plane tickets because simply coding from the literature
won't work this time (never does actually).

>>>


No one is demanding anything, Bill. It's called enthusiastic encouragement. 
(Come on team!) The more workers creating answers the better. And yes, my hat 
has been in the ring and is in the ring at present.

To your point, if simply coding from the literature won't work this time it 
means the literature is not only wrong, it's >so< wrong that topology tumbles. 
And now is a good time to remind ourselves that the literature was written from 
>first hand observation<. 

So, what is your logic leaving us with? If first hand observation won't work 
(see above), plane tickets would be a waste of money. Right? Yes, it's a 
vicious unwinnable Catch-22 you are creating here. 

I put my money on testing and taxon inclusion. Most systematic problems written 
by recent Triassic workers have arisen from a priori taxon gamut assumptions 
that have never been fully tested, as determined from testing with a much 
larger unpublished gamut. Differing observations of character traits are only 
the final "sanding" of a structure that has (typically, but not always) already 
been built.

Let's just see what happens when the competing analyses come out (if they are 
permitted to come out). After all, all cladograms are hypotheses. Critics and 
fans alike will someday have their day. As a scientist, I'm happy when someone 
points out errors in my observations and in my matrices. That usually repairs a 
problem. I hope you feel the same way. 

David Peters
St. Louis