Talk:Mosasaurinae

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Is Carinodens the sister genus of Globidens, on account of skull and teeth similarities?--Mr Fink 17:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone explain why mosasaur researchers use cladistic methods yet apparently are enamored of paraphyletic and polyphyletic genera? J. Spencer (talk) 15:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because paraphyletic taxa are hella useful? ;) Seriously though, not sure. I know "pure" cladistic methodology is rare outside vert paleo but I thought it had fully infiltrated here with mammal workers being the last to cave. Guess not... Dinoguy2 (talk) 15:19, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a fan of the continued use of prosauropod, hypsilophodont, iguanodont, and rhamphorhynchoid as adjectives, but there's something sublime about the clash of perceptions when one reads, for example, Caldwell and Palci (2007) in the latest JVP, and sees a tree with:

--+--Platecarpus planifrons
   `--+--Angolasaurus bocagei
      `--+--Platecarpus tympaniticus
         `--Plioplatecarpus

or that three species of Clidastes form a stepwise succession to all other mosasaurines, Mosasaurus is paraphyletic in respect to Plotosaurus, and Prognathodon with respect to Plesiotylosaurus. In a dinosaur article, the authors would either apologize, name several new genera, or in general make a big deal of it. J. Spencer (talk) 16:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is one area where I can point to exactly what I like about the old system over the new one--If several species of Clidastes form stepwise outgroups to other mosasaurines, why is it so hard to just say "all other mosasaurines evolved directly from the genus Clidates"? Because that's exactly what's going on here, only phylogenetic nomenclature is set up in such a way that it removes or obscure any direct ancestor-descendant relationships between taxa. Dinoguy2 (talk) 22:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]