Re: tweet-tweet

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

> But, to date, have they officially made birds a classification of 
> dinosaur?
> Or will they remain in their own order as close kin?

The Preamble of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature 
http://www.iczn.org/iczn/includes/page.jsp?nfv=&booksection=preamble 
guarantees your "freedom of taxonomic thought or actions". Translation: you 
can classify as you damn well please, and nobody can say it's wrong (or 
right for that matter); people can only say they like your classification or 
find it impractical or other such subjective judgments. By "you" I really 
mean you; there are no qualifications.

Yes, this does lead to a certain degree of chaos (I have never seen two 
identical classifications of the same group), which is why phylogenetic 
nomenclature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_nomenclature was 
invented; but the International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature 
http://www.ohiou.edu/phylocode is not yet in effect.