Re: Phylogenetic Inference vs. Classification

["Roy E. Plotnick" <plotnick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sure, birds are probably dinosaurs and thus dinosaurs did not go extinct at
the end of the Mesozoic.  Does this mean that nothing important happened?
By that logic, we could wipe out all humanity except for the population of
Hawaii and then argue that nothing happened, because H. sapiens did not
go extinct!
My bias is that the critical question is not which groups did or did not go
exinct, but was there a major disruption of ecological systems at the K-T or
other boundary.  The evidence for this disruption could be taxonomic
extinction,
but it could also be a major reduction in numbers, etc.

-- 
Roy E. Plotnick
Geological Sciences
University of Illinois at Chicago
845 W. Taylor St.
Chicago, IL 60607

plotnick@plotnick.geol.uic.edu

phone: 312-996-2111
fax: 312-413-2279