RE: species

["Tomporowski, Steve" <Steve.Tomporowski@us.ms.philips.com>]

Dr. Farlow and Dinolist members...
     Thanks, you jogged a brain cell or two about species.  I don't have ANY 
training in anatomy or biology and I'm very hazy as to what a 'species' 
really is.  I had always thought that the definition was a group of 
interbreeding individuals.  And two different 'species' cannot interbreed 
and produce viable offspring.  How does this apply to the defining of a 
dinosaur species.  Obviously we don't have the means to breed dinosaurs, so 
we have to rely on anatomy to define the species.  How do the two relate? 
 Do we have a good handle on what anatomical differences are enough to fit 
into the definition?  Or am I 'full of weeds' with the species definition??

Thanks much.....Didymus
 ----------
From: Farlow
To: dinosaur
Subject: species
Date: Thursday, July 23, 1998 7:56AM

     Now that species concepts are being discussed, I have been reading an
     interesting treatment of just such matters, albeit for a group other
     than primates:

     W.H. Kimbel and L.B. Martin (eds.), 1993, Species, Species Concepts,
     and Primate Evolution.  Plenum Press.

     I found the paper by Niles Eldredge therein (What, if anything, is a
     species?") to be particularly informative.

     Changing the subject, now comes a query:  Does anybody out there off
     the top of her/his head know about publications that report values of
     the coefficient of variation for postcranial bones--and pedal
     phalanges in particular, if such data are available--for species of
     dinosaurs, non-dinosaurian archosaurs, birds, crocodilians, or
     lizards?