Re: Hanson 2006, Mortimer, Baeker response

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>:

> For example, we cannot have one -idae inside another -idae (like 
> Agustiniidae inside Titanosauridae), or have -inae above -idae (such 
> as Dromaeosauridae inside Microraptorinae).  Other clades can change 
> in content relative to each other, but these family-level coordinated 
> clades ("family", "subfamily", "tribe" - idae, -inae, -ini) have to 
> stay in a hierarchial sequence.  This is the "baggage" you are 
> referring to.

There are those who would consider encoding relative rank in the ending 
on the name a good and useful thing.

> > The reason I don't feel the mandatory surge of outrage whenever I 
> > hear the word "family" is that I want a way to say the following 
> > kind of thing, which is actually pretty common:
> >
> >         Other sauropod remains from the Hastings Beds Group
> >         represent basal Titanosauriformes, Titanosauria and
> >         Diplodocidae; the new taxon brings to four the number
> >         of sauropod 'families' represented in this unit.
>
> I'm totally fine with this.  However, while "family" is useful for 
> categorizing diversity, it does not quantify diversity in any 
> meaningful way.  In the above sentence you could replace 'families' 
> with 'taxa'; this would convey the same meaning, given that the first 
> clause already clues us in about the level of phylogenetic diversity.

Why not just say "morphological type", since that's what we seem to mean?

--
Nicholas J. Pharris, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan

"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
    --Edwin H. Land