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

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

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<This way the name gets shorter, looks more logical, and the whole -formes
business is just to indicate that a group is an order -- ranks are being
dropped, so why should their specific endings be forced to stay.>

  Without definitions, neither name has priority over the same clade.
Using or defining one, and negating another as Clarke did, doesn't make
sense. Otherwise, one could have favored Odontornithes as well, redefining
it to include only Hesperornithidae and Baptornithidae; OR one could have
coined "Hesperornithoidea," also more traditional and shorter.
Hesperornithes as used has utility, as does Hesperornithiformes, but
relegating one to quotes is illogical in this regard. Clarke, in her
thesis at least, does not explain why one was favored over the other; nor
did she explain why, when Hesperornithiformes was more widely used and
more popular, she disregarded it for a name that hadn't been used for over
100 years (they aren't synonyms, so I'd be hard-pressed to regard that as
a valid argument, as well).

  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.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


        
                
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