And while on the theory of phylogenetic reconstruction...

[Randy Simpson <sirrandyofrandy@hotmail.com>]

Hello guys and gals. I've been following the discussion about character 
ordering in the archives with great interest, and finally got the nerve to 
subscribe myself. It reminded me of something else I had read recently on a 
message board, and I'm curious what you all think.What was said was 
something like because cladists treats all taxa as terminals, it is 
necessarly going to require one more assumption that constructing a 
phylogeny operating according to (or allowing, at least) ancestor-decendant 
relationships. I guess because you have to hypothesize a common ancestor, 
cladistics is less parsimonious. I know there are real difficulties with 
sorting out primitive stem groups from actual ancestors, but aside from 
this, what are your thoughts?

Trying to learn,

Randy Simpson

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