RE: Juratyrant, new Jurassic tyrannosauroid from Britain

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

  Naw, the authors make the "excuse" of referring to it as an "Anglicized 
version," as in the original definition of *Tyrannosaurus*. Oy.

  Funny thing, though: This wasn't necessarily the _obvious_ conclusion for the 
paper.

  The authors recover *langhami* as the sister taxon to *lengi*, and 
*clevelandi* was the sister taxon to that clade. The relationships supporting 
both a *lengi*+*langhami* clade, and a *clevelandi*(*lengi*+*langhami*) clade 
are based on weak, weak support that required removal of *Aviatyrannis 
jurassica* to achieve (as a "wildcard" taxon), whereas otherwise these taxa and 
others fell into a broad non-*Tyrannosauridae* polytomy. Rescoring as 
problematic a iliac vertical ridge character for *lengi* in the second analysis 
that recoveres this clade ends up collapsing it into a polytomy.

  They had a variety of options available to them, including sinking *lengi* 
into *Stokesosaurus*. They chose this option, stating "a phylogenetic analysis 
does not recover S. clevelandi and 'S.' langhami forming a clade exclusive of 
other taxa, then a new generic name must be erected for 'S.' langhami." My 
feeling is, is that if your analysis falls apart because one character is 
weakened, and that you could collapse the clade you've created into a polytomy, 
even the feeling that your taxon deserves recognition, you shouldn't name it 
anything else. This merely enforces questions about the analysis. Try again. As 
Marjanovic intimated, this looks like it's going to be more a matter of 
splitting than lumping: monotypic "genera" all the way. I hate to invoke a 
fallacy, but this is a slippery slope. There will be a point at which it will 
"just be easier" to split all fossil species into monotypic clades containing 
only a type species, including all those bloody ammonites!

Cheers,

  Jaime A. Headden
  The Bite Stuff (site v2)
  http://qilong.wordpress.com/

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


"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)


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> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:22:52 -0800
> From: keesey@gmail.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Juratyrant, new Jurassic tyrannosauroid from Britain
>
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Correct me if I am wrong, but the nominative, in the masculine, is 
> > _tyrannus_ ... how does "tyrant" fall from the root?
>
> Apparently it's Old French? http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tyrant
>
> --
> T. Michael Keesey
> http://tmkeesey.net/