Re: DEFINE BIRD

["T. Mike Keesey" <tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu>]

On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Jonathan R. Wagner wrote:
> John R. Hutchinson wrote:
> >About Aves/Neornithes:
> >     Read beyond Gauthier.  Cracraft was out there using cladistics (at
> >least in its early form) in 1981; see "Toward a phylogenetic classification
> >of the Recent birds of the world (Class Aves)," Auk 98: 681-714, in which
> >he uses Aves in a phylogenetic sense to include {_Archaeopteryx_ +
> >Ornithurae -- node-based);
>
>         D'oh! The really pathetic part about all this is that I have read at
> least part of Cracraft's stuff. I was not aware he had defined anything
> phylogenetically as early as 1981, however. In this case, Mike, my sincerest
> apologies for being WRONG WRONG WRONG.

'Sokay, at least you have read the literature, instead of gleaning
information from this list and Usenet. :) In my case, the info I had
gleaned was incorrect -- I thought Gauthier's definition had priority, but
everyone pretty much ignored it. I'm greatly relieved to hear that rules
of priority can be followed without making Aves equivalent to Neornithes. 

--T. Mike Keesey
tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu
http://umbc.edu/~tkeese1 -- Dinosaur Web Pages