Re: Rock'n'roll !

["Scott Hartman" <scott_hartman@hotmail.com>]

Ken,
   Actually, in my opinion, using non-ranking cladistic terminology is what 
allows Aves to remain essentially intact.  You understand that birds are 
dinosaurs in the same way they are archosaurs, reptiles, and diapsids.  But 
if you insist on using a Linnean based ranking classification system, then I 
have to insist that birds be removed from class status and be a suborder of 
Theropoda.
   Why? Because it better reflects morphological diversity.  Sure, birds 
are the most diverse group of dinosaurs, but so are rodents within the 
mammalia, and nobody suggests they should have their own class.  Flight is 
obviously unimportant, as bats don't have a class of their own.  Feathers, 
airsacs, beaks, endothermy, and all the other characters that has been used 
to define Aves are either definantly or very likely to be present in other 
dinosaurs.  Birds have at least as much in common with sauropods and 
thyreophorans as bats do with proboscideans, tubilidentates, and monotremes.
   So as I see it, strict cladistics comes closest to preserving the 
traditionalist view of birds, since they are then dinosaurs in the same way 
you are a vertebrate.  If we are going to attempt to preserve the linnean 
system (I wouldn't) then it has to mean something, in which case there is 
really no way to save class Aves.

Scott
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