Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:31:01.332Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How to find a dinosaur, and the role of synonymy in biodiversity studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Michael J. Benton
Michael J. Benton*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taxon discovery underlies many studies in evolutionary biology, including biodiversity and conservation biology. Synonymy has been recognized as an issue, and as many as 30–60% of named species later turn out to be invalid as a result of synonymy or other errors in taxonomic practice. This error level cannot be ignored, because users of taxon lists do not know whether their data sets are clean or riddled with erroneous taxa. A year-by-year study of a large clade, Dinosauria, comprising over 1000 taxa, reveals how systematists have worked. The group has been subject to heavy review and revision over the decades, and the error rate is about 40% at generic level and 50% at species level. The naming of new species and genera of dinosaurs is proportional to the number of people at work in the field. But the number of valid new dinosaurian taxa depends mainly on the discovery of new territory, particularly new sedimentary basins, as well as the number of paleontologists. Error rates are highest (>50%) for dinosaurs from Europe; less well studied continents show lower totals of taxa, exponential discovery curves, and lower synonymy rates. The most prolific author of new dinosaur names was Othniel Marsh, who named 80 species, closely followed by Friedrich von Huene (71) and Edward Cope (64), but the “success rate” (proportion of dinosaurs named that are still regarded as valid) was low (0.14–0.29) for these earlier authors, and it appears to improve through time, partly a reflection of reduction in revision time, but mainly because modern workers base their new taxa on more complete specimens. If only 50% of species are valid, evolutionary biologists and conservationists must exercise care in their use of unrevised taxon lists.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Fall 2008 , pp. 516 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Literature Cited

Adrain, J. M., and Westrop, S. R. 2000. An empirical assessment of taxic paleobiology. Science 289:110–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alroy, J. 2002. How many named species are valid? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 99:3706–3711.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Altaba, C. R. 1996. Counting species names. Nature 380:488–489.Google Scholar
Bebber, D. P., Marriott, F. H. C., Gaston, K. J., Harris, S. A., and Scotland, R. W. 2007. Predicting unknown species numbers using discovery curves. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274:1651–1658.Google ScholarPubMed
Benton, M. J. 1998. The quality of the fossil record of vertebrates. Pp. 269–303 in Donovan, S. K. and Paul, C. R. C., eds. The adequacy of the fossil record. Wiley, New York.Google Scholar
Benton, M. J. 2008. Fossil quality and naming dinosaurs. Biology Letters. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2008.0402.Google Scholar
Benton, M. J., Wills, M., and Hitchin, R. 2000. Quality of the fossil record through time. Nature 403:534–538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cain, S. A. 1938. The species-area curve. American Midland Naturalist 19:573–581.Google Scholar
Colwell, R. K., and Coddington, J. A. 1995. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through estimation. Pp. 108–118 in Hawkesworth, D. L., ed. Biodiversity—measurement and estimation. Chapman and Hall, London.Google Scholar
Dodson, P. 1990. Counting dinosaurs: how many kinds were there? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 87:7608–7612.Google Scholar
Dodson, P., and Dawson, S. S. 1991. Making the fossil record of dinosaurs. Modern Geology 16:3–15.Google Scholar
Gaidet, N., Fritz, H., Messad, S., Mutake, S., and Le Bel, S. 2005. Measuring species diversity while counting large mammals: comparison of methods using species accumulation curves. African Journal of Ecology 43:56–63.Google Scholar
Gaston, K. J., and Mound, L. A. 1993. Taxonomy, hypothesis-testing and the biodiversity crisis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 251:139–142.Google Scholar
von Huene, F. 1956. Paläontologie und Phylogenie der niederen Tetrapoden. Gustav Fischer, Jena.Google Scholar
Kuhn, O. 1961. Die Familien der rezenten und fossilen Amphibien und Reptilien. Meisenbach, Bamberg.Google Scholar
Lapparent, A. F. de., and Lavocat, R. 1955. Dinosauriens. Pp. 785–962 in Piveteau, J., ed. Traité de Paléontologie, Vol. 5. Masson, Paris.Google Scholar
Magurran, A. E., and May, R. M., eds. 1999. Evolution of biological diversity. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Mao, C. X., Colwell, R. K., and Chang, J. 2005. Estimating the species accumulation curve using mixtures. Biometrics 61:433–441.Google Scholar
Maxwell, W. D., and Benton, M. J. 1990. Historical tests of the absolute completeness of the fossil record of tetrapods. Paleobiology 16:322–335.Google Scholar
May, R. M. 1990. How many species? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 330:292–304.Google Scholar
May, R. M. 2004. Tomorrow's taxonomy: collecting new species in the field will remain the rate-limiting step. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 359:733–734.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
May, R. M., and Nee, S. 1995. Taxonomy—the species alias problem. Nature 378:447–448.Google Scholar
Olszewski, T. D. 2004. A unified mathematical framework for the measurement of richness and evenness within and among multiple communities. Oikos 104:377–387.Google Scholar
Ostrom, J. H., and Wellnhofer, P. 1986. The Munich specimen of Triceratops with a revision of the genus. Zitteliana 14:111–158.Google Scholar
Peters, S. E., and Foote, M. 2002. Determinants of extinction in the fossil record. Nature 416:420–424.Google Scholar
Preston, F. W. 1948. The commonness, and rarity, of species. Ecology 29:254–283.Google Scholar
Purvis, A., and Hector, A. 2000. Getting the measure of biodiversity. Nature 405:212–219.Google Scholar
Romer, A. S. 1966, Vertebrate paleontology, 3d ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Rozhdestvensky, A. K., and Tatarinov, L. P. 1964. Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves. In Orlov, J. A., ed. Osnovy Paleontologi, Vol. 12. Izdatelstvo Nauka, Moscow.Google Scholar
Russell, D. A. 1995. China and the lost worlds of the dinosaurian era. Historical Biology 10:3–12.Google Scholar
Sepkoski, J. J. Jr. 1993. Ten years in the library: new data confirm paleontological patterns. Paleobiology 19:43–51.Google Scholar
Solow, A. R., Mound, L. A., and Gaston, K. J. 1995. Estimating the rate of synonymy. Systematic Biology 44:93–96.Google Scholar
Steel, R. 1969. Ornithischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie 15:1–83. Springer, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Steel, R. 1970. Saurischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie 14:1–87. Springer, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Tarver, J. E., Braddy, S. J., and Benton, M. J. 2007. The effects of sampling bias on Palaeozoic faunas and the implications for macroevolutionary studies. Palaeontology 50:177–184.Google Scholar
Vickers-Rich, P., Rich, T. H., McNamara, G. C., and Milner, A. C. 1999. Agrosaurus: Australia's oldest dinosaur? Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 57:191–200.Google Scholar
Wagner, P. J., Aberhan, M., Hendy, A., and Kiessling, W. 2007. The effects of taxonomic standardization on sampling-standardized estimates of historical diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274:439–444.Google Scholar
Wang, S. C., and Dodson, P. 2006. Estimating the diversity of dinosaurs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103:13601–13605.Google Scholar
Web of Knowledge©. 1990–1992. http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com Google Scholar
Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H., eds. 1990. Dinosauria. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H., eds. 2004. Dinosauria, 2d ed. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
White, T. E. 1973. Catalogue of the genera of dinosaurs. Annals of the Carnegie Museum 44:117–155.Google Scholar
Wickström, L. M., and Donoghue, P. C. J. 2005. Cladograms, phylogenies and the veracity of the conodont fossil record. Special Papers in Palaeontology 73:185–218.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. 1992. The diversity of life. Penguin, London.Google Scholar
Wortley, A. H., and Scotland, R. W. 2004. Synonymy, sampling and seed plant numbers. Taxon 53:478–480.Google Scholar
Zittel, K. A. 1890. Handbuch der Paläontologie. I. Abtheilung Paläozoologie. III Band. Vertebrata (Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves). Oldenbourg, Munich.Google Scholar