Re: BCF (was New Article in Experimental Zoology)

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

"T. Michael Keesey" wrote:
> 
> I would like to once more plea for people to divorce the term "bird" from
> "avian" and other such terms based on formal taxa. They are not completely
> synonymous.
> 
> "Bird", like any other English vernacular word, is defined by the general
> agreement of English speakers...

Here here! I try not to get involved with things like semantics or
cladistics (just the sight of the word "cladistic" in the message title
is enough to send me to sleep), however...

Since "bird" is a common term, and not a scientifically defined one, I
tend to use the term "bird" as a crown-based definition going back to
the most recent common ancestor of all modern birds. I suppose this is
what most people would call "Neornithes" (in agreement with Dinogeorge's
post). In this case, I would consider "true" birds to have arisen some
time during the Cretaceous. 

Of course, the term "bird" has little bearing on the terms "Aves",
"Avialian", etc, which ARE scientifically defined terms (if anyone can
actually agree on the definitions, that is). Hence I don't consider
Archaeopteryx as a "bird" in the proper (that is, common) sense of the
word. However that is not to say it doesn't reside somewhere within
"Aves". In my opinion, if you stretch the term "bird" to include Archae,
then you'll be including a whole lot of other theropods that are
decidedly different from your average living bird. I'm with HP Keesey on
this one - let's leave the term "bird" out of scientific discussions
about extinct non-neornithine theropods.

Help me! I'm actually using cladistical terms... and I think I might be
liking it.

-- 
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Dann Pigdon                   Australian Dinosaurs:
GIS / Archaeologist         http://www.geocities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia        http://www.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/
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