Re: AMARGASAURUS SATTLERI (pretty long)

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/4/00 3:23:22 PM EST, NJPharris@aol.com writes:

<< Fortunately for us, nature and the efforts of collectors of things dead 
and 
 alive have provided us with only a tiny slice of this maddeningly continuous 
 variation: a finite collection of discrete data points known as individuals. 
 
 The job of the taxonomist is to classify *those individuals available for 
 study* as best he or she can.  At least, that is my way past the roadblock. 
>>

So what you're saying is that the boundaries recognized between taxa are the 
result of gaps in the fossil record and/or fortuitous survival into the 
modern era rather than anything inherent in the organisms (such as 
morphology, genome, etc.).