Re: BCF (was New Article in Experimental Zoology)

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

George Olshevsky (Dinogeorge@aol.com) wrote:

<I call the stem group birds Ornithes: the clade of all archosaurs closer
to modern birds than to modern crocs; and the crown group birds Aves: the
clade of all modern birds, including their most recent common ancestor and
all its descendants. I guess others might call this Neornithes. Ornithes
includes all the dinosaurs as well as all modern birds, paleobirds (e.g.,
Archaeopteryx, Enantiornithes), and dino-birds.>

  Stem-group birds as a term-defined clade is already taken with Avialae.
In actuality, You are using a stem-defined extant content system, and just
use birds as one stem. However, this is inclusive of taxa that no one, not
anyone but perhaps two people, choose to consider birds. The Greeks used
_ornithos_ in a very explicit and visually identifiable manner. That there
is already a stem-defined group, Ornithosuchia, which rubs many people the
wrong way, but is effectively the senior synonym in this manner, using de
Quieroz and Gauthier philosophy. I doubt "Ornithes" for this clade would
ever pass peer review on the simple fact of it being appropriate to birds
only. However, nothing explicitly presents a problem to using this clade
name for the stem defining group except that extent taxa are supplemented
by non-resemblant and in some cases completely variant forms of which the
extant group is only a part. As listed before in this vein, no, and I mean
_no one_ I have talked to on synapsids, would consider *Dimetrodon* a
mammal.

  Cheers,


=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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