A statistical investigation of the Anthracomyas of the basal Similis-Puchra Zone in Scotland

Abstract

The author's illuminating paper carries a stage further a process that is becoming inevitable in modern palaeontological research: the recognition and description of fossils as groups and not as individuals. There is, however, perhaps some inconsistency in his use o.f mathematical formulae to define his groups, and at the same time to diagnose his ‘species’ and to select a holotype in ~he usual way. It is more than possible that related ‘species’, readily distinguished as separate communities by statistical means, might possess holotypes selected because of their closeness to the respective norms, and yet both falling within the limits of variation of each ‘species’. A holotype then has no intrinsic value: it is merely an incidental illustration of a formula. This is in direct opposition to the strict Linnaean conceptions of such Writers as Bather and Buckman, who held that in the last resort the characters of a species are determined by those of its holotype-conceptions that, as the author so clearly shows, are almost meaningless when applied to the mussels of the Coal Measures. Holotypes are superfluous in statistically defined species, as indeed are named species themselves: communities described by formulae require only formulae for their definition, and the logical nomenclature to be adopted for such groups is more akin to the astronomers' star catalogue than to Linnaean binomials.