valido ateh/haltbar bis/to consume before

[Thomas G. Lammers]

At 01:55 PM 05-12-98 -0300, Thomas Schlemmermeyer wrote:

>So I may ask: A type really has to be an eternal, sacred thing? or would
>it be more useful to adapt types to modern industrial DINs or ISOs or
>norms and simply put a date of validity on it?

I don't know about zoology, but in botany we have mechanisms for minimizing
the damage that can result when a name is discovered to be long misapplied
due to loss or equivocality of a type.  For example:  Types destroyed (as by
the RAF in Berlin in 1943) can be replaced by a neotype.   Names may be
conserved with a conserved type.  Epitypes may be appended to equivocal
types to fix application.

The fact remains that the type method is the single best way for stabilizing
nomenclature and fixing the application of names.


Thomas G. Lammers

Classification, Nomenclature, Phylogeny and Biogeography
of the Campanulaceae, s. lat.

Department of Botany
Field Museum of Natural History
Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496 USA

e-mail:    tlammers at fmnh.org
office:          312-922-9410 ext. 317 (voice-mail)
home:     630-759-4280
fax:                312-427-2530
http:    www.fmnh.org/candr/academic_affairs/collection_report/cv_lammers.htm

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