Title:
Dear Bjorn,
We teach all our palaeobiology students to follow the nomenclatural rules laid out in
Matthews (1973) (full ref. below). The paper describes and discusses the rules relating to
Richter's original proposals for open nomenclature and synonymy lists. Bengston (1988)
appeared to be a revision of this, more to refresh it to peoples memories, I think (it can be
seen that Matthews (1973) often 'dips' below the surface of memory).
Matthews' paper describes all the relevant rules, and if everyone was to follow this, taxonomy
would be an awful lot easier (as I found in untangling previous author's notation and symbol
use in my recent PhD research).
The paper is readily available, and well worth consideration.
Best wishes,
Tony.
MATTHEWS, S. C. 1973. Notes on open nomenclature and on synomnymy lists.
Palaeontology, Vol. 16, Part 4, 713-719.
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Dr Anthony Butcher
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth
Burnaby Building
Burnaby Road
Portsmouth
PO1 3QL
United kingdom
Tel: (+44) 23 9284 2258
Fax: (+44) 23 9284 2244
anthony.butcher@port.ac.uk
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