Re: Postorbital processes (& weighting??)

["T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Ken Kinman wrote:

>       Not that I think Feduccia's phylogeny is very likely, but in my
> opinion it does show how splintered classifications can be confusing and
> also waste a lot of good names when they become future heterodefinitional
> synonyms (maybe not here, but elsewhere outside of vertebrates where the
> fossil record is very poor).  In botany (where strict cladism is more
> unpopular and widely criticized), they are learning from such examples in
> vertebrate zoology that this is not the way they want to go.
>      If we used informal names like pygostylians, ornithothoraceans, etc.,
> for all these intermediate taxa, it wouldn't clog up the nomenclatural
> system so badly.

But if Feduccia is right, the informal names would represent
*polyphyletic* groups, and would be abandoned anyway.

> And even Keesey doesn't list Metornithes any more (if
> Dinosauricon ever did).

Indeed it did. If redefined as Clade(_Passer_ <-- _Archaeopteryx_) it
might be more useful (although currently not very different from
_Pygostylia_).

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