[Taxacom] New systematics book

[Richard Jensen]

I agree with Ken.  The expression "Birds are descended from Reptiles" is
more informative and interesting than is "Birds are Reptiles."  First, it
clearly states an evolutionary hypothesis.  Second, it encourages the
reader to consider what lineage of reptiles differentiated into birds and
how this happened.

Cheers,

Dick J


On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Ken Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> Mike wrote:
>
>      The phrase "Birds are Reptiles" is just so much more informative,
> powerful
> and evocative than "Birds are descended from Reptiles." It simply screams
> out that there is a lot to learn when you present that to a student. The
> fact that the majority of scientists that want to recognize birds and
> reptiles as mutually exclusive taxa are Creationists and Intelligent
> Designers should make you stop and think. Clearly you are not in those
> camps, but the company you keep should make you nervous.
>
> My response:
>
>       I don't see how "Birds are descended from Reptiles" is any less
> informative.  And as I said, biologists put birds and reptiles in different
> Classes even after Archaeopteryx was discovered.  And people in general
> have made the distinction for thousands of years.
>
>       "Birds are Reptiles" certainly screams out in a more powerful and
> evocative way, but that can come across as Ivory Tower elitism, and I
> predict historians of science will someday label strict cladism in that
> way.  And to me it is just as silly as saying that chloroplasts ARE
> cyanobacteria, rather than chloroplasts are descended from cyanobacteria.
>  Or silly as saying "mitochondria ARE gram-negative bacteria", rather than
> "mitochondria are descended from gram-negative bacteria".  In some ways,
> the latter phrase seems more informative, because it indicates what a great
> tranformation was involved when a gram-negative bacterium evolved into a
> mitochondrion, or a cyanobacterium evolved into a plastid, or how different
> birds are from the vast majority of their reptile ancestors.
>
>
>                           -----------Ken Kinman
>
> P.S.  And your comment about "the company" I keep makes no sense.
>  Creationists and Intelligent Designers apparently don't believe birds
> evolved from reptiles, so we put birds and reptiles in different classes
> for totally different reasons.  I'm not going abandon such a classification
> just because they have abused it in their attacks on biological evolution.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
>



-- 
Richard Jensen, Professor
Department of Biology
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556