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Re: Gargantuavis neck vertebra
for once, I completely second Greg's email! We must be more aware of
how little we know of palaeodiversity, and be much more cautious of
wastebasket use of well-defined taxa.
___________________________________
Dr. Heinrich Mallison
Abteilung Forschung
Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz-Institut
für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung
an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Invalidenstrasse 43
10115 Berlin
Office phone: +49 (0)30 2093 8764
Email: heinrich.mallison@gmail.com
_____________________________________
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Gaius Julius Caesar
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 12:18 AM, <GSP1954@aol.com> wrote:
> The one problem I have with the paper is the reference of an isolated
> vertebra not only to a specific genus, but to a particular species that is not
> from exactly the same formation and level of that formation, and when there
> are no cervicals known from the holotype or even from any other specimen that
> can be assigned to the group. After all, just a thousand years ago there
> were a whole lot of similar modest sized moa species crawling around New
> Zealand. Who knows how many gargantuavid (not sure if this is the family
> name, too
> lazy to check) species and genera were wandering around on the island/s
> (not sure how many there were, too lazy to check) of Campanian/Maastrichtian
> southern France. Must have been a number of them if that Darwin was right
> about evolution of the species. Chucking isolated material into a species is
> more often than not a very bad habit that we need to stifle yourselves on.
> Like
> tossing all Triceratops random bones into T. horridus when it now looks
> like there are two or more species separated stratigraphically. Another bad
> one
> is labeling all allosaurid remains from the Morrison (except the top) A.
> fragilis. Pleeeze.
>
> GSPaul</HTML>