Re: New papers in Geobios (and nomenclatoral gripe)

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Jaime A. Headden wrote-

>   The authors don't seem to actually make this particular argument, for 
> the
> nature of nomenclature competition. Weishampel is notable for his arguments 
> of
> nomina dubia, from his editorialship on both _The Dinosauria_ editions and
> elsewhere, and tends to find that taxa with types that lack diagnostic
> characters are not viable in nomenclature. To him, these taxa are 
> worthless.
> The authors DO state that the species, *suessi*, is not diagnostic, and 
> thus so
> is its monotypic genus, and that the species falls into the nearest 
> diagnostic
> receptacle available for it, *Zalmoxes*, whose type IS diagnostic. They 
> cannot
> support the validity of *M. suessi* for referral, so simply place the 
> entire
> Muthmannsdorf rhabdodont material into *Z.* as *Z.* sp. The authors also 
> would
> appear to argue that a species and a genus are NOT differentially 
> diagnostic,
> i.e., that there isn't a way to diagnose a genus and a species separately
> without a second species to use the mutually shared species characters as
> generic characters. This makes monotypic taxa problematic when the type is
> poorly diagnostic. Thus, Sachs and Hornug sink *Mochlodon suessi* in 
> *Zalmoxes*
> as *Z.* sp.

I agree with Chris.  This is not possible to do.  You can't just sink a 
named species into an unspecified unnamed "sp.", regardless of what 
Weishampel thinks.  It's like when authors try to sink whole genera into 
"Theropoda indet." and just pretend the genus and species names don't exist. 
 If Mochlodon suessi's holotype is referrable to Zalmoxes but not 
specifically diagnostic, there should be three species of Mochlodon - M. 
robustus, M. shqiperorum and M. suessi.  The latter could be the holotype 
yet still be specifically indeterminate.

Mickey Mortimer