Re: Progress in evolution

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 95-10-28 14:24:51 EDT, kmccarvi@basalt.Mines.EDU (Kata
McCarville) writes:

><snip>
>>> the state of a character at or just after its initial
>>> appearance in a clade
><snip>
>
>George, you almost said it yourself!  I'm thinking, what's wrong  
>with "initial state"?  "Primary state"?  Basal?  Primal?
>
>Or a quick cruise thru the thesaurus turns up: principal, chief,  
>basic, original, fundamental, first, leading, elementary,  
>main..

Yeah! Anything like that will do. Now all we have to do is write a scad of
refereed cladistics papers employing that term, and bingo! it's accepted.