Re: Mesozoic-ware

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 96-01-13 11:33:58 EST, jpoling@infinet.com (Jeff Poling)
writes:

>  George O. clearly gives birds a new class.  Bob Bakker (who is by no
>means the only one, I just can't remember all the authors, I've read so many
>books) certainly would put them inside the Dinosauria as a sub-order or
>something.

At this point, I have Aves as an infraclass of the class Archosauria. It's a
very subjective thing--too subjective for cladists, who don't bother with
Linnaean ranks anymore and simply list the clades in more-inclusive order,
e.g.: Vertebrata, Tetrapoda, Amniota, Reptilia, Archosauria, Dinosauria,
Aves. I still find the partitioning properties of Linnaean taxa useful, so I
use the ranks. But I pick well-understood traditional taxa to occupy the key
ranks.