Re: Hadrosaur nomenclature

[AM Yates <Adam.Yates@bristol.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Jonathan R. Wagner wrote:

> myself. Remember, species are what are important anyway... "units of
> biodiversity" and all that... Genera don't make new species, or new genera,
> and there is little point in recognizing a clade with a known membership of
> one species. _caroljonesa_ and _byrdi_ are serially closer to _foulkii_,
> "_Eolambia_," "_Protohadros_," and "_Hadrosaurus_" are at best little more
> than hollow shells, nomenclatural artifacts holding a place for
> undiscovered, and possibly nonexistent, sister species, or accumulated
> morphology shared with as-yet undiscovered intermediates. 

I agree with the substance of this argument but I would make one
observation. In dinosaur science, if not all of VP, it is the genus name
that is remembered and communicated by most people. After all they are
required to be unique formulations of letters whereas species names are
frequently repeated (how many thousand robusta's must their be in
biological nomenclature?). In fact the genus name is sliding into the
position of the accepted label for the smallest recognisable unit of
biodiversity (I like the phenon concept since species has no meaning in
palaeontology - and frequently no meaning in neontology) and it is that
little species epithet that is becoming the useless redundant bit of
verbiage used to satisfy some ancient and outdated rules surrounding
biological nomenclature. 

I'll hop off my soapbox now and get back to work

cheers

Adam Yates