Re: New alligatoroid paper . . . .

[chris brochu <cbrochu@fmppr.fmnh.org>]

King, Norm wrote:
> 
> Not wanting to open the whole PT can of worms again, I would nevertheless
> like to make a few points since I haven't blown off enough steam lately to
> irritate anybody.
> 
> Chris Brochu said (7/7/99; 10:44am):
> 
> >. . . we can erect a name and then find out which taxa belong to it . . .
> But we have no knowledge of the taxon's attributes . . . <
> 
> Sounds worse than a nomen nudum to me.


At some level, it can't be avoided.  Suppose a name has been erected
subsequent to a phylogenetic analysis - an analysis restricted to living
taxa.  We may have scads of characters (molecular, morphological,
chromosomal, behavioral, etc) supporting its monophyly, and its
membership among extant taxa may be totally noncontroversial.  But we
really can't say much about its extinct membership until an analysis of
the fossils has been conducted.  For a paleontologist, "we have no
knowledge of the taxon's attributes..." is partially correct, even
though the taxon has a name founded upon a robust phylogenetic analysis.

I totally agree with everyone so far - names should not be erected
without some sort of reference cladogram.  Like I said, very few people
would try that in the first place.  But given that very few analyses are
perfectly universal in their taxon sampling, some degree of post-hoc
clarification will always be going on.


chris





-- 
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Christopher A. Brochu
Department of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History
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