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Re: Blogging SVP



Mike Keesey <keesey@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dave Peters called it!


I'll put that down to luck.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.    ;-)


> (Well, as near as I can make it out, he puts
> some other things closer to bats, like colugos and pen-tailed
> treeshrews[!] and African palm civets[!!!], but....)


But indeed.  I can readily believe that arctocyonids and
phenacodontids are paraphyletic (or even polyphyletic).  Not crown
Scandentia or Carnivora though.


> It involved an arbitrary character-based distance metric that also
> revived Elosaurus. (No less arbitrary than the usual decision,
> though.)



Unless _A. ajax_, _A. excelsus_, _A. louisae_, and _A.parvus_ do NOT
form a monophyletic group to the exclusion of other diplodocids, there
doesn't seem any point to reviving _Elosaurus_ - or _Brontosaurus.






Cheers

Tim