RE: Resending

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Grr... I hate Hotmail, destroying my basically complete reply.  Anyway, 
shortened main points appear below.

Félix Landry wrote-

> But IMO that doesn't  mean old-fashioned two hundred pages long monographs 
> of
> careful anatomical  description should be replaced by short Nature or 
> Science
> papers with almost  nothing in them and some unreliable sixty taxa tree at
> the end.

They haven't been.  We still get long monographs (Clarke's on Ichthyornis, 
Chure's upcoming on Allosaurus, etc.), and short papers existed in the past 
too (ever seen any original descriptions by Marsh?).  It just takes longer 
to write long papers, and I for one would rather learn about a new discovery 
quickly than wait several years for a monograph.  Monographs are often 
published for specimens originally described briefly anyway.

> But I dare to think
> this is NOT science. For me,  dinosaur paleontology is mostly anatomy,
> stratigraphy, paleobiology and  paleoecology. The first two items are the 
> dry and hard
> data on which the other  two more attractive ones are based.
> But where does phylogenetic systematics  fit in there?

Phylogenetic systematics is as much science as paleoecology is.  They're 
just determining different kinds of facts.  You may find the higher level 
subjects to be more attractive, but not everyone shares your aesthetic.

> I completely support
> Nick's position in that I think we should mostly  limit phylogenetic 
> research
> to the identification of solid patterns (with or  without postcranial
> characters, that's not my point). But after this is done, I  can't see the 
> sheer
> utility of those numerous analyses. You add some abscure  species known 
> from two
> teeth and one caudal vertebra and the tree gets  completely changed... Get 
> rid
> of some characters you don't like and  Corythosaurus might appear as a 
> brand
> new ankylosaur! I'm not exagerating so  much.

> From your description of the labile nature of current results, it should be 
clear identifying basic evolutionary patterns is NOT complete.  Most 
published morphological cladistic analyses are crap.  Too few characters and 
taxa, too subjectively defined states.  Once adding a new taxon or getting 
rid of a few characters doesn't change topology much, THEN you can complain 
we should get on with other fields.
OR I could reverse your argument.  Once we get the basics of paleobiology 
down, let's move on to determining low level relationships.  We already know 
Tyrannosaurus is a terrestrial carnivore, I can't see the sheer utility in 
all these papers trying to determine its speed, cranial strength, binocular 
overlap, etc..  You change some assumptions in Hutchinson's running model, 
and come up with completely different results. ;)

> I keep thinking that human
> thought is somewhat superior to computer  calculations, and that careful, 
> thorough
> anatomical studies completed with  detailed stratigraphic work can also 
> give
> some useful picture of evolution. I  think we'd know more about bird 
> origins by
> REALLY describing ANY of those Yixian  feathered findings than by building
> heaps of cladistic trees by slightly  modifying some already used and 
> criticised
> matrix.

Human thought is inferior to PAUP when it comes to calculating most 
parsimonious trees in a realistic time.  All the anatomical description in 
the world is useless for phylogenetic studies if objective extensive 
comparisons to other taxa aren't performed.  Madsen's monograph tells us 
what Allosaurus' osteology was, yes.  But does it tell us how and why 
Allosaurus is related to Acrocanthosaurus or Carcharodontosaurus?  Okay, it 
technically does include a page of comparison with some other theropods, but 
you get the idea.  We need both detailed descriptions and extensive 
phylogenetic analyses (and other studies...) to learn about the totality of 
an organism.

> I do
> think we might figure out many things  about phylogeny if we started 
> thinking
> about it instead of having computer  programs do the work for us.
> snip<
> Is it that silly to say that we  could somewhat turn back to
> actually thoroughly interviewing fossils instead of  comfortably use some
> unreliable statistical method?

PAUP only does work we could do ourselves if we weren't so slow.  We don't 
use parsimony because it's easy, we use it because it's objective.  That's 
what makes cladistics more scientific than non-quantitative methodologies.  
Is morphological cladistics unreliable?  Perhaps.  I seriously doubt a lot 
of our classic theropod relationships are real, for instance.  But at least 
we have a consensus.  And I'd rather have that than unresolvable 'which 
character is more important' debates any day.

> And, more generally, is it  really more
> interesting to know where Torvosaurus fit on the cladistic tree than  to 
> know what it
> looked like and how it lived?

To me, yes.  Yes it is.

Mickey Mortimer