Archaeopterygid bird from China

[Richard Pyle]

Ken wrote:

> John,
>       While I do agree with you that the location of oldest
> fossil is not "necessarily" near the origin of a family, I agree
> with Dick that an Asian origin for Archaeopterygidae is presently
> the best hypothesis.

Although I agree with most of the points in Richard Zander's concurrent
post, I think it's important to remember that "best" is a relative term.  I
can't help but believe there is some sort of threshold where the "best"
hypothesis among several is every bit as indistinguishable from "crap" as
the worst hypothesis.  Something with a 2% probability of being correct is
twice as likely as something with a 1% probability of being correct...but
neither serves as a very useful working hypothesis.  I think it all depends
on the particulars of each case.

I don't know the details in this case, but I have to say that I find John
Grehan's position, while perhaps a bit extreme [e.g., "Everything else (I
would submit) is largely, if not wholly, a fanciful conjecture masquerading
as science..."], to be the "best" perspective among several.... :-)

Shitfing gears a bit, this same point is largely why simply knowing that a
particular phylogenetic arrangement represents the "most parsimonious" tree
tells me very little about how much faith I should put in its approximation
to reality (e.g., whether it's worth disrupting nomenclatural stability
over).

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Ichthyology, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/pylerichard.html