Re: Odd nomenclatural sidenote for Europasaurus

[gerarus@westnet.com.au]

Atrributing authorship of a taxon to only a subset of the authors of
the paper, or to a person not an author, is perfectly valid, and
actually not an uncommon practice (it's not so common in animal
papers, but is very common in botanical papers). It does not normally
indicate any sort of dispute between authors, and usually indicates
nothing more than that different authors worked on different parts of
the paper (as in this case). It was, admittedly, rather sloppy of the
authors in this case to not directly indicate the restricted
authorship at the point were the name was first given, as this means
that most people will overlook the restriction (I know I would have
:-( ). (Offhand, there would have been no requirement to give an
explanation at that point, simply giving the name as _Europasaurus
holsingeri_ Mateus, Laven & Knötschke sp. nov. would have been
enough).
    I believe Mike is incorrect about the correct citation in this
case, though. The options for citation are <taxon author(s)> _in_
<paper author(s)> or <taxon author(s)> _ex_ (or _vide_) <paper
authors> (in my experience, _ex_ is used a lot more commonly than
_vide_ - note that _in_, _ex_ and _vide_ are all written in italics
as they are Latin words). Zoological practice tends to be a bit
sloppy about which to use (often using _in_ for all instances), but
in the more stringent (as always) botanical practice, use of _in_
indicates that the taxon author personally wrote the section of the
paper describing and naming the species, while _ex_ (meaning 'from'
or 'out of') indicates that the taxon author coined the name, but was
not the author of the relevant section (for instance, if Mike coined
a _nomen nudum_ somewhere that I later validated by publishing a
description, an appropriate citation would be Keesey _ex_ Taylor). So
in this case, the appropriate citation would be _Europasaurus
holgeri_ Mateus, Laven & Knötschke _in_ Sander, Mateus, Laven &
Knötschke 2006.
    Ain't taxonomy grand?

        Cheers,

            Christopher Taylor

---- Original Message ----
From: keesey@gmail.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Re: Odd nomenclatural sidenote for Europasaurus
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:37:17 -0700

>On 6/7/06, Andrew A. Farke <andyfarke@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> In the Europasaurus paper's acknowledgements, the authors state
>that,
>> "P.M.S. was responsible for the bone histology work presented as
>part of
>> this study. The morphology, systematics and taphonomy of the new
>sauropod
>> was studied by the remaining authors, who are to be considered the
>sole
>> authors of the name Europasaurus holgeri gen. et sp. nov."
>>
>> So this implies that the name should be cited as "Europasaurus
>holgeri
>> Mateus, Laven and Knötschke 2006," rather than "Europasaurus
>holgeri Sander,
>> Mateus, Laven, and Knötschke 2006." I've never heard of such a
>thing before.
>> Is this really the sort of practice that will be followed? Should
>it be
>> followed? Or does the notation in the acknowledgements carry no
>weight
>> whatsoever?
>
>I believe the proper citation would be: _Europasaurus holgeri_
>Mateus,
>Laven, et Knötschke vide Sander, Mateus, Laven, et Knötschke 2006
>(Substitute "and" for "et" if you like, naturally.)
>
>There are a fair number of citations which use "vide" to distinguish
>the namers of the taxon from the authors of the paper, when
>necessary.
>-- 
>Mike Keesey
>The Dinosauricon: http://dino.lm.com
>Parry & Carney: http://parryandcarney.com