Re: [dinosaur] Psittacosaurus amitabha, new species from Cretaceous Ondai Sayr Locality, Mongolia
"David Marjanovic" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.science.dinosaurs.general |
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| Message-ID | <trinity-ab29bd20-7625-4fcb-b039-d5a7baee8172-1564388936105@3c-app-gmx-bs12> |
Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juli 2019 um 22:42 Uhr Von: "Paul P" <[email protected]> > Genus vs. species is sometimes arbitrary, but not always. Clustering algorithms can help to determine which it should (probably) be. Morphometrics, cladistics, etc. Technically, it's always arbitrary, because the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature doesn't recognize any definition at all for "genus" or for that matter "species". While there is now a widespread consensus in vertebrate paleontology that genera should be monophyletic, even that is not in the Code. Additional criteria have been proposed on rare occasions, but never implemented across the board. *Psittacosaurus* as currently understood is monophyletic; but any decision whether to call that clade *Psittacosaurus* or Psittacosauridae or anything else like that is arbitrary.