Re: Benton and Kinman (long)

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

David and Nick,
    You are looking at it backwards.  Benton and I are not "stuffing" Aves 
into Reptilia (actually, come to think of it, that is what the strict 
cladists are doing in a way).
     On the contrary, we are removing the exgroup (Aves), which leaves a 
paraphyletic group Reptilia.  But by leaving a marker for the exgroup within 
Reptilia, we can indicate where it fits cladistically (thus cladistic 
"sister group" information is not lost).  I code {{Avea}} as sister group to 
Family Dromaeosauridae.  The way I look at it, Avea (or Aves if you prefer) 
could have been classified as the sister family to Dromaeosauridae back in 
the middle of the Mesozoic, but then Aves underwent an enormous amount of 
anagenesis and diversification which justifies raising it to a higher rank.
    Using a military hierarchy as an analogy, Reptilia was like a big land 
army in which only a single company specialized in airplane duties in the 
early years---- but then the "air force" company expanded rapidly and 
becomes a separate branch ("Class" Air Force) that rivaled the importance 
and diversity of the "Class" Army from which it was removed.  A crude 
analogy, but you get the idea.
    I've already conceded that Benton's classification is a little messy 
and confusing, but this is only because (1) he doesn't distinctively set off 
his markers, as I do with the double brackets; and (2) he is still using too 
many intermediate ranks.  In my opinion, it is best to go back to a small 
number of ranks, and you can then cladistically splinter the major taxa by 
some kind of coding system.  Ed Wiley's classificatory conventions (1979) 
was one attempt that ultimately failed (it was not as explicit as an 
alphanumeric coding, and worse yet it did not allow for paraphyletic 
groups).  I slowed down work on my own system, thinking Wiley's System would 
be adopted and improved upon by other cladists, but it never caught on.  So 
I went back to my own system (which evolved through several different 
incarnations between 1977 and publication in 1994).
            -----------Ken Kinman
*******************************************
David and Nick wrote:
> >
> > Hm.  It doesn't look to me like he separates Aves from Reptilia.  It 
> looks
> like he stuffs a "class" (Aves) into a "division" (Maniraptora) (which is
> really what you're doing, too, if you'd only admit it), which really seems
> to stretch the concept of rank beyond usefulness.
>
> And he puts that division into Class Reptilia. A class within a class, and
> Infraphylum Gnathostomata within an unnamed subclass of Class Agnatha 
> (which
> is marked as paraphyletic, like Reptilia). And so on. I think he uses ranks
> to give an idea of how "big" (diverse, whatever") a clade is. Very few of
> his groups are paraphyletic.
>
> IMHO it becomes impossible to remember what the ranks are intended to mean,
> and which ranks there are in the first place. Dropping all rank names makes
> it all much easier.


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