Re: Fw: synapsids are reptiles

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 7:32 AM

> <Just look at how many names have the wrong tense because they us 'i' for
> an animal named for several different people than the correct 'orum'?>
>
>   Unfortunately, this is ridiculously prevalent, and I agree with the
> methods of George in correcting this. But as of 1999, the ICZN no longer
> allows family names, genera, species, and all taxa up to superfamily rank,
> to be corrected based on construction errors.

<urgh>
Maybe all those names can be corrected when they are converted to the
PhyloCode. I suggest to contact Kevin de Queiroz, who does the Companion
Volume (definitions of "widely known & used" taxa) practically alone. :-)

> This means, that though *Sinovenator changii*
> was named for a woman, Chang Wiman,

(Meemann Chang respectively Zhang Miman.)

>   Never. If I coin a taxon, I will be as close to the appropriate tense in
> the stem as possible to get.

Tense? Such as past tense? ~:-|

> I see no one "fixing" *Paralititan* to the more
> "accurate" _Paralotitan_....

At least in Latin we could blame that on "vowel weakening". This is the same
phenomenon that permits Maniraptora -- compare manipulate -- even though the
stem is manu-. (Which is why man_u_al is correct. Manus is U declension,
continued manus, manu, manum, manu; manus, manuum, manibus, manus, manibus;
totally unlike, say, saurus which is O declension.)