Re: justification for excluding lagerpetids and/or pterosaurs from a phylogenetic analysis of the Archosauria

[David Peters <davidpeters@att.net>]

> 
> Echoing Tim: I fail to see how this justifies the exclusion of lagerpetids 
> and/or pterosaurs from a phylogenetic analysis of Archosauria.  The fact that 
> some authors find pterosaurs to fall outside of Archosauria does not mean 
> that pterosaurs should be excluded from archosaurian analyses, any more than 
> the papers finding pterosaurs to fall within archosaurs indicate that you 
> should exclude them from your lepidosaurian tree.  Pterosaurs might not be 
> archosaurs - that does not mean that they cannot be included in an analysis 
> looking at Archosaurian relationships.  If I produced a tree tomorrow that 
> found snakes outside of lepidosauria, then is every subsequent worker 
> suddenly obligated to exclude snakes from every future lepidosaurian analysis?


Fine. Keep them in. They don't contribute one iota to a better understanding of 
the origin of dinosaurs, unfortunately. If they did, I'd be on your side.