My personal veiw of Cladistics

[Stang1996@aol.com]

    I personally don't care for cladistics all too much.  I like more the
traditional linean system that everyone has been brought up with since
forever and knows and uses most of the time.
    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 do like them if you want to show what something evolved from and the
'relative "closeness"' of the "subject critter" and its outgroups.  I do
however do not believe they should replace Linean classification as the
"official" classification system.

Peter Buchholz
Stang1996@aol.com