[dinosaur] Origolestes, or the blurry limits of nomenclatural availability

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Another extended abstract called "paper", of a paper that is called 
"supplementary information". Well, so far so good.

The "paper" doesn't show any evidence of being registered in ZooBank, and 
neither, for that matter, does the paper. So far, still so good; this is 
Science, the print version will probably be out next week.

The trick, as with *Lisowicia*, is that nobody knows if supplementary 
information to a validly published printed paper is considered validly 
published by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Back in 2012, 
when the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature amended the Code 
to allow electronic publication under certain conditions, it seems not to have 
considered the existence of supp. inf. at all, so it's nowhere mentioned in the 
Code. As with *Lisowicia*, almost all the description of *Origolestes* is in 
the supp. inf..

To be available, a validly published name must be 1) explicitly stated to be 
new, 2) provided with an explicitly designated type and 3) provided with a 
diagnosis that is meant to differentiate the taxon the name refers to from 
everything it could be confused with.

Condition 1 will be fulfilled as soon as the "paper" comes out in print: the 
second paragraph begins with "*Origolestes lii*, gen. et sp. nov.".

Condition 2 will also fulfilled: the legends to figures 1 and 2 state that 
"V14383-1" is the holotype. (It is nowhere mentioned what collection that is, 
but it should be obvious from context, and indeed the supp. inf. says it's the 
IVPP.)

Condition 3 will not be fulfilled by the "paper" as far as I can tell. There is 
quite a bit of description of spalacotherioids ("symmetrodonts" in the 
narrowest sense) generally, but no statement intended to differentiate 
*Origolestes* from other members of that group. This is in stark contrast to 
the "supp. inf.", which spends five and a half single-spaced pages on this.

The worst-case scenario is that the "supp. inf." is not considered validly 
published and the "paper", by failing to contain a diagnosis, does not 
establish the name. In that case, the name is not available: it does not even 
compete for priority against later synonyms or homonyms, it's "not even wrong", 
it simply doesn't officially exist. I really need to steal the time to write to 
the Commission about this (and a few other issues).

Fun fact: from reading the "paper", you'd think all seven authors of the 
publication are authors of the name. But the "supp. inf." disagrees, exempting 
the deceased Li from the authorship of "*Origolestes lii* gen. and sp. nov. 
Mao, Hu, Wang, Hill-Chase, Smith et Meng"; it adds: "Species name honors 
professor Chuankui Li for his contributions to the study of early mammals." 
Page 1 of the "supp. inf." explains why there are two deceased authors (Hu and 
Li) on the paper: "The first specimen (V13604) was obtained by Yaoming Hu in 
2003, and in the following year V14383-1 (the holotype), V14383-2, and V14384 
were collected by Chuankui Li from the Lujiatun beds at Shangyuan, Beipiao, 
Liaoning, China."

Gesendet:ÂDonnerstag, 05. Dezember 2019 um 20:13 Uhr
Von:Â"Ben Creisler" <bcreisler@gmail.com>
Â
A new paper:
Â
Origolestes lii gen. et sp. nov.
Â
Fangyuan Mao, Yaoming Hu, Chuankui Li, Yuanqing Wang, Morgan Hill Chase, Andrew 
K. Smith & Jin Meng (2019)
Integrated hearing and chewing modules decoupled in a Cretaceous stem therian 
mammal.
Science: eaay9220 (advance online publication)
DOI: 10.1126/science.aay9220