[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Subject Index][Author Index]

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



On Thu, 18 Jun 2020 at 05:34, Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 08:34:52 PM UTC, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> 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.

Correct, and I am very much in favour of this for dinosaurs. The genus-plus-species convention arose in a context where it was being applied to extant animals known from (almost always) complete specimens, and where it was not unreasonable to make assertions about which species were naturally grouped(*). In Mesozoic dinosaur palaeontology, we are usually dealing with only fragments of a skeleton, and can very rarely say anything certain about a new specimen's position within the established phylogenetic tree â if there even IS an established tree. So it makes sense to give such taxa uninomials(**) rather than tying their names to an inevitably fragile phylogenetic hypothesis.

(*) whatever "naturally grouped" even meant back then.
(**) a new genus-plus-species pair in which the genus name is new effectively functions as a uninomial whose spelling happens to have a space in the middle.

In short, anyone who names a new species of an existing dinosaur genus is creating a hostage to fortune: there is every chance that the best-guess phylogeny will change, and then the name of the species will have to change to reflect it. Who needs that?

-- Mike.