I made a mistake a while back, and didn't catch on until just now. In my article on Living Fossils, I stated that the living Coelacanth was in a completely different family than the fossil coelacanth. I had recieved the information from Talk Origins. I have now found out that the living coelacanth is classified in the same family, but in a different genus and of course a different species than the fossil fish. I plan on not relying on T.O. as much as I have in the past. The mistake was corrected.
Marine Bio's article on the Coelacanth
Did you apprise them of the error?
ReplyDeleteNo, but I plan on it. I am part of the T.O. group, so I will let them know about it.
ReplyDeleteHere is a response from Mark Isaak:
ReplyDelete"Thank you for the suggestion, but there seems to be some disagreement
about it. Other sources list Coelacanthidae and Latimeriidae as
distinct, and give additional families, also. Wikipedia, under
Coelacanth, lists Coelacanthidae, Latimeriidae, and seven other families,
and gives a current reference for its taxonomy (Nelson, 2006, _Fishes of
the World_). This accords with what I remember from Forey, 1998,
_History of the Coelacanth Fishes_, the "further reading" I give with
CB930.1 (but which I don't have available now).
I would not be surprised if a lumper somewhere says all the coelacanths
should be in the same family, but I would like some more reputable
references before I change the page. Anyone know the identity of
the lumper(s), and their publications? I see that the 1994 edition of
Nelson's book is cited by ITIS, which synonymizes the names. Curious."
It seems that there is some controversey over the way Coelacanths should be classified. As he stated Wikipedia classifies The Modern Day Coelacanth in a completely different family, and cites a recent source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth#Taxonomy
I will probably leave my article alone now. This is the only time that I have ever caught an error at T.O., and it may not be an error after all.
AiGBusted