RE: Precision, Ultra-, Super-, Seismo- and the like

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

> _Supersaurus_ won because although the two names were raised in the
> same paper (Jensen 1985), it was the first of the two to be named.

No, it won because the first revisor chose it so. Contrary to popular myth, 
page and line priority do not exist; the two names were published at the very 
same time.

> For what very little it's worth, the impression I get is that the more
> of _Seismosaurus_ they excavate, the more it does look like a big
> _Diplodocus_.  In particular, the initial description showed a very
> oddly shaped ilium with a large posterodorsally directed process at
> its distal end.  Now the other ilium is out of the ground, and it
> doesn't have that process -- which, then, must be assumed to be a
> pathology rather than a diagnostic difference.

Have they now learned to distinguish stone and bone? The *Seismosaurus* book 
says this is a major problem in this kind of preservation -- the preparators 
dug through several bones without noticing.
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