fossil plant nomenclatural problem

[Una Smith]

PIETER WINTER wrote:

>From all your evidence, esp. your background about Lesquereux's philosophy,
>it would seem clear that his work was not very scientific, let alone of
>taxonomic value!

To a neobotanist, I suppose my description of Lesquereux as a creationist
would seem to imply that he wasn't a good scientist.  On the contrary, I
think that he was remarkably objective and careful for someone working on
fossils in the second half of the 19th century.  The field was *heavily*
loaded with religious and philosophical significance.  Also, Lesquereux
was quite good at sorting his specimens into species, despite the major
challenge of defining a "species" when it is known only from a handful of
dispersed fossil organs.  His only weakness was his habit of putting most
specimens in existing species, and most new species in existing genera.
This was the customary "conservative" approach used at that time.  Today,
conservative paleobotanists tend to put each new species in its own genus,
unless there is *good* evidence of its "true" affinity;  really cautious
paleobotanists use formal but unpublished morphotypes until they have had
a chance to show their specimens around and come to a concensus treatment.


[...]
>As a non-paleobotanist, I am for the moment assuming that it is perfectly
>valid/realistic to have a single species represented in both the Tertiary
>and Cretaceous.

...but on different continents.

It is possible, and does occur, but most cases in the older literature are
errors of identification.  Few people ever had the chance to visit foreign
museums, nor was it feasible to ship specimens back and forth across the
Atlantic, so they had to rely on the literature.  And the literature was
much smaller then.  Also, it is not unusual to find that the closest living
relative of a Cretaceous North American plant is endemic to SE Asia, an
area for which little or no botanical information existed 100 years ago...
Those early paleobotanists did amazingly good work, considering what they
had to work with.


[...]
>I would not consider "species 3" as a type specimen, or Lesquereux's
>description as valid, given the tentative attachment to Eriocaulon [...]

Does anyone here object to this argument?  I would be delighted to have a
legitimate reason to retain the name Palaeoaster inquirenda, which by far
the most common name cited in the literature and applied to specimens of
"my" species.


        Una Smith               Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
                                Yale University
        una.smith at yale.edu      New Haven, CT  06520-8106