[Taxacom] Homonymous synonyms / cosmic order

[Adam Cotton]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
To: <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>; <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Homonymous synonyms / cosmic order


I expect that it wasn't independent! The second guy probably thought the 
name hadn't already been validly published ...

Stephen
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While I have no opinion on the case under discussion, strange coincidences 
do really happen as I know very well.

In 1983 I was invited to contribute a paper to a new journal devoted to the 
group I study. There was at that time a new taxon here in Thailand still 
without a name, so I submitted a paper describing it to the journal. Unknown 
to me, another author in Italy had also been asked to contribute to the same 
journal and totally independently he decided to describe the same taxon and 
give it the same name! Needless to say the editor of the journal asked us to 
combine our papers into a single paper with two authors.

Adam Cotton.