Re: Sereno's (2005) new definitions

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

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

<Erm...

It will be easy if all those names are registered by the same author(s). This,
in turn, will be relatively easy if my proposal to the PhyloCode mailing list
on averting the dangers of the Companion Volume gets through. Otherwise, it'll
be a race -- first come, first served.>

  That would not be a tremendously difficult and problematic issue. Imagine
that Hermann von Meyer has been dead over a century, so someone ELSE will have
to "register" the name FOR him, or do it for themselves. In which case, despite
more prevalent usage of Hesperornithiformes, it is likely Clarke will register
Hesperornithes to the same definition to establish a priority FIRST. Another
problem with the registration issue is that the registrator and registrar is
that it IS a race, without any scientific concience involved.

  I have a BETTER solution. IF we much register anything, we do so in the order
of publication, and regard the usage and recognition of current work to regard
the validity or use of nomenclature attached to definitions. This will, as
Sereno suggests, require DISCUSSION, and that will take a while. Decades. I
would argue longer, a century.  But of course this won't satisfy people, they
want this registration system in place NOW. We can try to recommend just
treating definitions as a state of priority, rather than the name itself, since
there is actually two issues here: nomenclatural stability, and taxonomic
stability, that may require two separate systems to consider. It would be nice
if the ICZN would just drop ranks, and recognize suprageneric clades in
general, rather than just families.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

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


        
                
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