Re: synapsids (was RE: pdf request)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>]

On Wed, June 13, 2012 7:35 pm, Joe Gilvary wrote:
> Ar 6/13/2012 7:22 PM, scríobh Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.:
>> On Wed, June 13, 2012 6:24 pm, Joe Gilvary wrote:
>>> Ar 6/13/2012 5:38 PM, scríobh Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.:
>>>> The idea of a synapsid-archosaur or synapsid-diapsid clade clade has a
>>>> long history (Diaptosauria; early non-computerized cladistic
>>>> analyses, etc.) And you can certainly pick out a few characters to
>>>> support it (thecodonty, for one). But it doesn't pop out in the
>>>> really comprehensive studies of Permo-Triassic critters.
>>>>
>>> I would appreciate pointers to any info you (or others) have on early,
>>> non-computerized cladistic analyses.
>>>
>> Not to put too fine a point on it: WHY?!?!?!
>
>
> I'm interested because it was mentioned on the History of Paleontology
> group once, and I had assumed that the first folks to apply the math had
> been without computers. I'd be interested to see when the math found
> this particular application, from a history of math view and from a
> history of paleontology view.
>
Okay, that make sense.

See my recommendation re: a scholar.google search.

Also, see old issues of Systematic Zoology (as it was still called at the
time) in the 1970s and 1980s. This was one of the premier journals in the
early days of the cladistic revolution.

Also keep in mind that the method was developed outside the realm of
paleontology, and certainly outside of dinosaur paleontology. Most of the
early stuff was neontological.

That said, early dinosaurian phylogenetic analyses can be found in early
1980s papers by Greg Paul, Paul Sereno, Dave Norman (among others). And
they didn't actually always show their math, use explicitly data matrices,
and so forth.

A classic example of an early dinosaur non-computer (and indeed
non-algorithmic) dinosaurian cladogram is in:
M. R. Cooper. 1985. A revision of the ornithischian dinosaur Kangnasaurus
coetzeei Haughton, with a classification of the Ornithischia. Annals of
the South African Museum 95(8):281-317
No real attempt at hypothesis falsification: only a "by the seat of the
pants" phylogeny shown as a series of dichotomous branching events.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu   Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661

Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117
                        University of Maryland
                        College Park, MD 20742 USA