[Taxacom] Hedges /Kumar (eds) The Timetree of Life

[John Grehan]

Jason,

You misunderstand my original statement. It was only that the title of
the project which I said should have been "DNA sequence time tree"
instead of "TimeTree of Life". I did not deride the content as you
assert.

I guess you have not read all those papers that do use them as maximal
age. There are many such papers and the recent critique of this practice
by Heads (2005) will give you plenty of examples.

John Grehan

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Mate
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 3:18 PM
To: Taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Hedges /Kumar (eds) The Timetree of Life


John,

criticism is fair game as long as you back it up with facts. If you have
read any of the articles (i.e. Hepialids) point at the problems you see.
But deriding all books that use or rely on molecular data as propaganda
is just boring. You may have good points but you are just not fleshing
them out.

As for the use of fossil evidence, I have yet to come across a case were
they use them as maximal age when dating trees. It just makes no sense
to state that you have the fossil of the very first 
exemplar of a taxon.

Best

Jason

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