This commentary reviews the debate on eliminating terms like basal taxon and transitional taxon, highlighting implications for cladistic studies.
Matt just sent me an email entitled Are there "basal" sauropodomorphs?, in which he pointed me to Mario Bronzati's (2017) opinion piece in Palaeontologia Electronica, "Should the terms 'basal taxon' and 'transitional taxon' be extinguished from cladistic studies with extinct organisms?" Here's the reply I sent Matt, which at his suggestion I am posting here essentially unedited.
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Mike Taylor (2017) studied this question.
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