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

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

That's a problem with your version of the idea that pterosaurs are lepidosaurs: 
It's a belief founded on your analyses versus everyone else's. This isn't 
parsimony, and this isn't science.



Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so." --- Douglas Adams (Last Chance to See)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)





----------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 17:06:10 -0600
> From: davidpeters@att.net
> To: mhabib5@jhmi.edu; dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: justification for excluding lagerpetids and/or pterosaurs from a 
> phylogenetic analysis of the Archosauria
>
>>
>> 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.
>
                                          
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