Re: [dinosaur] Party like it's 1758!

[Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>]

On Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 08:34:52 PM UTC, David Marjanovic 
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> > Many taxa (species) do have multiple individuals referred to them, so it's 
> > an over-generalization to say dinosaur palaeontology treats genera as 
> > species.
> No â not when the individuals can't be morphologically distinguished (at 
> least beyond what the authors consider individual variation within a 
> species). Again: the smallest recognizable clades are usually formalized as 
> genera in vertebrate paleontology, with a few exceptions like Cenozoic 
> mammals.

I'm not quite following this--are you saying we should be erecting formal 
dinosaur subspecies? If you check any species-level analysis, you'll find 
clades of individuals. You seem to be suggesting that Triceratops is really a 
species, not a genus, with the three recognized species (one unnamed) actually 
being subspecies..?


> > Yeah I know, if they can interbreed, then they're not distinct species 
> > (much less genera).
> Do the first-semester biology textbooks still use this particular species 
> concept? Because hardly any taxonomists do.

Not sure--I haven't taught an intro course in years. I generally wouldn't use 
that definition, but my impression is that a lot of people still do (maybe not 
in VP).


> 1) most new species are automatically named as new genera as well;

You may be right, but I can think of quite a few new species named into 
preexisting genera. In my own 2018 paper on Euoplocephalus & related taxa, I 
named two new species (in two diff. preexisting genera). But there is a bias 
toward publishing manuscripts that name genera and not "just" species.


> 2) fairly little splitting, or lumping for that matter, is currently going on;

See above--you must not be paying much attention to Ankylosauria. It's a 
splitter-v-lumper war right now.

    Paul P.