Re E-mail probs at NHM

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Norm MacLeod wrote:

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In case any of you were wondering where PaleoNet has been over the last few
days the NHM's e-mail server failed to come up after a routine shutdown of
our network last weekend.
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....and here was I thinking that the reason why no-one was posting anything
to Paleonet was because all the palaeontologists were up here for the 
fabulously successful Palaeontological Association Annual Conference we
just hosted in Glasgow.

On the question of hierarchical taxonomy, I have to agree with Neil Clark and
a number of other previous contributors.  I am sure most of us imagine the 
hierarchical series of groups as a nested series of entities, and the important
information on degree of morphological similarity (which we like to think
relates in some way to phylogenetic relationship) is contained within that 
nested structure.  Further, I am sure most of us realise that the nested
structure which relates to each group is unique to that group and should not
be compared directly with some other, phylogenetically distant group.  I would
be very surprised to learn that anyone really considered a mollusc family to
be directly analogous to a mammal family.

However, on a wider question of the use of taxonomy in general, many people
have already pointed out that grouping specimens together and applying a 
single name to that group is a very efficient way of submerging the degree
of true morphological disparity within that group, as well as any temporal
changes in morphology which might be occurring within the group.  Evolution
studies which rely on turnover rates of named taxa rather than actual
measurement of morphological form independent of the pre-existing taxonomy
are therefore to be treated with caution.

Someone once suggested to me that species names should change by one letter
at a time in a stratigraphical section as the morphology changes...

Anyway. a Merry Christmas to all palaeonetters.

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Tim McCormick
Dept. of Geology & Applied Geology
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
United Kingdom
Email: tmcc@geology.glasgow.ac.uk

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Tim's the name,
Measuring trilobites is the game.....