Re: crocodylians, amphibians ... (was Sarcosuchus)

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

Chris,
    Yes, there are too many high school graduates who are ill-informed, and 
that is why I will correct *anyone* who suggests that spiders are insects or 
ichthyosaurs are dinosaurs.  That's wrong whether you are cladist or not 
(science speaks with a single voice on such things).
    But I will not engage in cladistic nitpicking like jumping on people 
who say "dinosaurs" when they mean "non-avian dinosaurs" (maybe that's one 
of the reasons why Dodson hates the latter "tortured" phrase so much).  
Furthermore, mesoeucrocodylians have long been a part of Crocodylia sensu 
lato (which is still widely used, and I think even Benton might still use 
it).  And I believe Benton's 1997 book on Vertebrate Palaeontology has a 
classification in the back with Class Aves separate from Class Reptilia (but 
with a "Kinman-like" marker for Aves within Reptilia)---I'm pretty sure that 
was his book (anybody correct me if I'm wrong about that).
    People like Benton and myself do not attack cladistic analysis (at 
least not to the extent that Dodson, Feduccia, Martin, and others do), but 
we are not strict cladists either since we do recognize some paraphyletic 
groups (Robert Carroll is another good example).  This is typical of 
centrists who I refer to as Ashlockians.  Such centrists are the silent 
majority you should really be worrying about once phylocode is implemented, 
and I still believe it is among botanists that the initial objections will 
be most strongly voiced (especially among systematists---- and I suspect 
many ecologists will then follow suit once the problems involved are made 
clear).
     And as far as cladistics being central to so many NSF grants, 
publication requirements, etc., there seems to be quite a bit of suppressed 
resentment on that account as well, which could feed more fuel into a 
backlash once it begins in earnest.  Have even heard a little of that 
resentment expressed publicly on TAXACOM now and then.  I still suspect it 
will be implementation of phylocode that will really set it off, and perhaps 
that is one of the reasons phylocode even makes many cladists nervous.
     But what concerns me most is an increase in time wasted on 
nomenclatural problems, and another code (and phylocode in particular) will 
make that problem much worse (and thus Benton's paper on this subject came 
as a great relief to me).  Cantino's published reply to Benton has not 
appeared as far as I know.
     Finally, although classifications must change to keep up with new 
knowledge, this does not mean that formal classifications should be subject 
to unnecessary instability.  And in my opinion purely cladism does 
destabilize classifications to an unacceptable degree, and those predictions 
that they will bring stability eventually are no more believable today than 
they were in the 1970's (on the contrary, I now think such predictions are 
rather naive).  There is more than one way to store cladistic information in 
a classification, and strict cladism has too long stifled efforts to explore 
and develop alternatives.
            ------Ken

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