Re: My personal veiw of Cladistics

[Bill Adlam <bill.adlam@st-peters.oxford.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 22 May 1995 Stang1996@aol.com wrote:

>     I don't really like them because they place too much of an emphasis on
> the more highly evolved.  For instance, poor old Staurikosaurus is just a
> dinosaur; but Styrakosaurus is a dinosaur, a phytodinosaur (IMHO), an
> ornithischian, a genasaur, a ceroped, a marginocephalin, a ceratopsian, a
> neoceratopsian, a Ceratopsid and a Centrosaurine.  Are you getting my point?
>  They also seem to put an entirely unfounded (in some/most cases) emphasis on
> "common ancestery nodes" that show that these two closely related critters
> evolved from a common ancestor, even if it is obvious that one evolved from
> the other.

I have to say that it isn't obvious to me that Styracosaurus evolved from 
Staurikosaurus.  And I think it's very useful to separate a hypothesis of
common ancestry from one of direct descent, as the former is much, much 
easier to test.
                                                                Bill Adlam