Re: muddying the waters??

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Ahmed,
    I *DO* regard Mammalea as a branch of Therapsiformes, and my 
classification shows this.  Within the classification of Order 
Therapsiformes, I place the marker {{Mammalea}} as sister group to the 
therapsid Family Tritheledontidae (or you can put it as a sister group to 
Family Chiniquodontidae if you think that is more accurate).
    In the early Mesozoic, the mammals could have been regarded as just 
another therapsid family, and my marker shows this.   But at the same time, 
the explosive radiation of mammals in the Cenozoic is such that most humans 
in the present choose to taxonomically upgrade mammals to Class status.
    Therefore my classifications add anagenetic (divergence) information to 
the phylogenetic information.  And in the process, I also am able to avoid 
many of the drawbacks of traditional classifications (cladistic or 
eclectic).  In this context, Classes are very useful.
                 ---------Ken Kinman
****************************************************
> From: "Ahmed al-Mahasa Sha'ad" <am_shaad@hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: am_shaad@hotmail.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: muddying the waters??
> Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 21:25:15 GMT
>
> > Nick,
> >     I'm muddying the waters??  If I say Class Mammalea, everyone knows 
> > what I am talking about.
>
> Do they???  Indeed? What about those fossil  therapsida which are  VERY
> similar to mamamls?? It is not crystal - clear at all  for these ones.
>
> 'Classes' are useless, is it SO bad to regard Mammalia as a  branch within
> the Therapsida??
>
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