Re: "Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth..."

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Williams" <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 6:01 PM

> David Marjanovic wrote:
>
> >This one... there are only 2 possibilities: either it's a loriid, means,
it
> >belongs to a _part_ of the crown group of Psittaciformes, or it's not a
> >psittaciform.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe that modern avian "orders"
> (e.g., Psittaciformes, Galliformes, Sphenisciformes) are restricted by
> definition to their respective crown groups.

Wasn't my point. My point was that it doesn't share any features with the
crown group of Psittaciformes as a whole; it only shares features with
lories. Now if only I could find the paper to tell whether that's a
misinterpretation of mine... grrrr.

> Further, here's what Clarke et al. (2003) have to say for the penguin
clade:
>
> " "Pansphenisciformes" is used here as a name for all taxa more closely
> related to extant penguins than to any other extant avian taxa.
> "Sphenisciformes" is suggested as a name for all parts of this lineage
with
> a loss of aerial flight homologous with that of extant penguins. These
> definitions are deliberately not formalized pending recommendation of the
> PhyloCode regarding the proposed use of "pan" as a prefix in all stem
clade
> names (Gauthier and de Queiroz, 2001 ) and to allow penguin specialists to
> debate appropriate definitions for these names prior to the start date of
> the PhyloCode (Cantino and de Queiroz, 2000 ).  As all extant penguins
have
> consistently been placed in the "family" Spheniscidae, it is also
> recommended that the name "Spheniscidae" be formally applied to the clade
> comprised of the most recent common ancestor of all extant penguins and
all
> of its descendants. "

Wouldn't matter. Formalization is impossible before January 1, 200n. -- I
like those particular definitions, just for the record. :-)