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Re: PDF-request: Original description of Lagosuchus and/or Marasuchus
True, true....as long as it is unique to a single terminal taxon in a
given analysis, it doesn't matter how inclusive that taxon is, but we
agree that they are generally uninformative in said given analysis?
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 4:48 AM, David Marjanovic
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
>> This is a much different definition of Autapomorphy than I am used
>> to, which is a character state that is unique to a terminal taxon and
>> thus uninformative in a phylogentic analysis. I believe this is the
>> definition that David Peter's is also following when it describes
>> them as "weird".
>>
>> I would think that the term apomorphy is what you described above.
>
> I'm using Hennig's definitions, under which one taxon (no matter how big)
> has autapomorphies and two sister-groups have synapomorphies; those
> synapomorphies are autapomorphies of the smallest clade that contains the
> two sister-groups. So, fused frontals are an autapomorphy of
> Pachypleurosauridae, Carcharodontosauridae, and Anthropoidea _each_.
>
> Hennig was one of those people who like to make up terminology for the fun
> of it, but this way the meanings of these terms don't depend on the taxon
> sample of a data matrix. If you want to say a character state is unique,
> just do that.
>