Re: Fossil Record 2 database

[barryr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Barry Roth)]

I read the Benton article in the April 7 _Science_.  I believe it is
fundamentally flawed.  Although the author spends several paragraphs
acknowledging that the "family" is an artificial construct, supported
principally by the say-so of "authorities" in each taxonomic group,
and also essentially acknowledging that "families" and other groupings
of canonical systematics may be paraphyletic entities, the analysis
that follows is based on -- that's right -- families!  Users of the
Fossil Record 2 database should ask themselves what is really tabulated
there.

Barry Roth
Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
barryr@ucmp1.berkeley.edu