Friday, May 7, 2010

And the winner is...

The poll for "which name do you prefer?" is closed and the results are in. Crurotarsi wins by a landslide with 72% of the votes, followed up by Pseudosuchia with a modest 22%, and Crocodylotarsi with a mere 6%. Obviously, this doesn't resolve any of the issues in the nomenclature, but it gives me a nice view of the readership. Surely, these results are biased. How many people who dislike the term "Crurotarsi" are going to come to a blog with such a name in the title? But clearly there are enough, since 28% of the votes were anti-Crurotarsi. Although the results of this poll may show a bias, I feel a review of the literature may reveal similar skewing in favor of "Crurotarsi", but we shall see.



In other news, I arrived home on Wednesday, after a Cinco de Mayo get together with 2 of my favorite Paleontologists, to a wonderful sight. In my front hallway was a book-shaped package from Amazon and inside was my copy of Triassic Life on Land: The Great Transition by H-D Seus and Nicholas Fraser.



It came out at the end of last month and I have been dying to get my hands on a copy. I have only had the time to browse through it, but it looks pretty Trias-tastic. It is definitely more technical than Fraser's previous book Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic, without all the pretty paintings by Douglas Henderson, but with the benefit of more up-to-date information.

FYI, if any of you buy one of the above books (or any Amazon product linked to on this website, like on the Resources page) from a link on this website, I get a small portion of the sale. So start buying some Triassic literature and support your favorite crurotarsan-themed blog!

4 comments:

  1. How many people voted in general? Was there an option for Pan-Crocodylia or crocodile-line archosaurs ;)?

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  2. Haha, yeah, I should have had an "other" option or something.

    I don't have the exact numbers on me right now, but I think there were about 25 votes.

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  3. David MarjanovićMay 13, 2010 at 5:24 AM

    I came too late for the poll, but, for the record, I prefer Crurotarsi, too. In other words, I hate Pseudosuchia for its meaning and its historical baggage. True crocodiles are false crocodiles? I actually got a Recommendation against this kind of thing into the PhyloCode. I'm against saving the names of multiply paraphyletic rhizome groups; entirely new concepts should come with entirely new names.

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  4. David, I completely agree. And despite all the technical issues of definition, validity, etc, at least Crurotarsi seems to be more popular at the moment. Pseudosuchia does roll off the tounge a little beter tho...

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