Re: [dinosaur] Gunakadeit, new thalattosauroid from Late Triassic of Alaska (free pdf)

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

> Just a philosophical question - are these statements accurate? I understand 
> that _Gunakadeit_ is currently the most early-branching taxon of 
> thalattosauroideans, and it's supposedly the most plesiomorphic. I am not 
> sure, however, if I like the idea that of the two sister taxa, the more basal 
> is the one with lesser species described. Suppose, in the future, we will 
> find more taxa on theÂ_Gunakadeit_ side of the dichotomy, some of them 
> highly derived/apomorphic, and even of Jurassic age. The current topology 
> might as well remain unchanged (except the addition of the new taxa), but it 
> will be the Thalattosaurus-Xinpusaurus clade considered more basal.

That's not a philosophical but a terminological question. In reality, "basal" 
means "farther away from the taxa I'm interested in at the moment".
 
Papers on the phylogenetic position of the turtles have no problem calling all 
mammals "basal amniotes".