Cladistics paleontology

Paleontology of the past is revived in molecular systematics of the present, in its search for ancestors and centers of origin. The revival ignores, or retreats from, the cladistic reform of paleontology of the 1970s, with historical roots in the work of Louis Dollo (1857-1931) and fossil Inngfishes. The subsequent development of cladistics has been arrested, too, by compnter implementations of character optimization and the ideology of total evidence, which reflects a phenetic rather than cladistic objective the overall similarity of synapomorphy. 

Cladistic systematics has appeared in at least two recent historical arenas numerical taxonomy and paleontology. Within each area of contention, cladistics achieved a reform — but to a degree only. Its success has been evident for a generation. 

In the same year, the cladistic reform of paleontology began in reaction to Lars Brundin s monograph on austral midges (Brundin, 1966) and the English translation of Heimig (1966). 

Boucot, A.J., Cladistics is it really different from classical taxonomy , in Phylogenetic Analysis and Paleontology, Cracraft, J. and Eldredge, N., Eds., Columbia University Press, New York, 1979, pp. 199-210. 

Peter Forey is a researcher in fossil fishes at the Natural History Museum, London, where he undertakes research into the anatomy and relationships of fishes, in particular coelacanths and primitive teleost fishes. While most of his research is specimen based, there is inevitably a theoretical component concerned with how relationships are discovered and how the results are expressed in diagrams and classifications. Within the field of paleontology there is division between those who advocate that the present is the key to the past, and those who believe that the past is the key to the present. Forey sides with the former, and explores ways in which the fossil record is best able to supplement our explanations of present diversity. He has contributed to and edited several volumes of essays concerned with such diverse subjects as the theory and practice of cladistics, the relationship between systematics and conservation, and the kinds of observations that can usefully reveal the paths of evolution. 

G. NELSON Abstract Introduction Numerical Taxonomy Paleontology Cladistics... 

Ebach, M.C. and Edgecombe, G.D. (2001) Cladistic biogeography Component-based methods and paleontological application. In Fossils, Phylogeny, and Form An Analytical Approach (eds. J.M. Adrain, G.D. Edgecombe, and B.S. Lieberman), Kluwer/Plenum... 

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