DINOS HAVE CLASS..

["D.W.Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

Yes, I did it again. Forgot to talk about a certain bit I meant to..

Well, DINOS HAVE CLASS. Just wanted to say, no they don't. Now we use cladistics
a hierarchial kind of classification (putting families into infra-, sub-,
orders, superorders, infraclasses, subclasses, classes etc. etc.) is more or
less redundant and you can say that (for example) Ceratosaurus nasicornis is a
ceratosaurid neoceratosaurian ceratosaurian theropodian saurischian dinosaurian
archosaur without saying Order: Ceratosauria and all that gubbins. Cladisitcs
just makes all of this too compex to be tenable because all nodes in cladograms
are named (or should be).

Imagining that dinosaurs form part of a hierarchial classification makes for
extreme complication as what are you gonna do with dinosaurian out-groups, or
with all other archosaurs? Give them their own little classes? Or lump them 
into an artificial assemblage? So, if you were to use a hierarchial
classification, dinosaurs wouldn't be a class but a sub- or infraclass within
Class Archosauria. BUT as we don't do this (cladistics doesn't require an order-
class type hierarchy), forget it!

Sorry for going on so much again.

"That was never a condition of our agreement nor was giving Han to this bounty
hunter!"   "Perhaps you think you are being treated unfairly?"  "No"  "Good, it
would be most unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here..."

DARREN NAISH
dwn194@soton.ac.uk