To Weight, or not to Weight?

[N.Monks@xxxxxxxxx (Neale Monks)]

Dear All,

I'm in the middle of trying to use a cladistic approach to figure out the
relationships between certain heteromorph ammonites. The traditional
approach has been to look for intermediates.

There are remarkably few features that can be used, and some of them are
probably of low taxonomic worth (such as density of ribbing, whorl
section). So is it worth weighting up those features that are more likely
to be useful? Opinion seems to be mixed here at the museum...so what does
the greater palaeontological community think?

Best wishes and thanks...

Neale.



>From  Neale Monks' PowerBook, at...

Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD
Internet: N.Monks@nhm.ac.uk, Telephone: 0171-938-9007