Comments by "Marc Jones" (@QT5656) on "Cladistics Part 2: Monophyly, Paraphyly, and Polyphyly" video.

Lots of great things in this video but I have one nit pick. Historically, I think, the term basal was used to refer to fossil taxa found in older rocks. As you mention, it's since been used to refer to living taxa that are less nested within a phylogenetically hierarchy for avoiding the misleading phrase primitive. However, the phrase basal has now simply become a synonym for "primitive" with all the same baggage. The fact that most people would never refer to Mammalia as the most basal clade of Amniota is evidence of this phenomenon. Their (false) anthropocentric perception of Mammalia as the most advanced amniotes stops them from doing it. "Least nested" is a better phrase because it refers to the shape of the tree in question.
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@DS127 you seem to have missed the point.
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@DS127 You have missed the point. Primitive is indeed misleading in the context of this video which is discussing taxa in the context of trees and cladograms. As Professor Dave explains at 4:40. ALL animals alive today have been evolving for the same length of time. There are no living animals that represent ancestors. Therefore, it is misleading to refer to any living (extant) taxa as more primitive than another. Individual anatomical traits may be described as primitive relative to other traits and it is possible that some taxa have more traits inferred to be primitive that others. However, all living animals are a mixture of primitive and derived anatomical traits. Referring to living taxon as primitive is misleading and leads to circular reasoning when evaluating their anatomical traits: that all or most of their traits are primitive. There are many examples when such assumptions were made and further research showed that these assumptions were incorrect.
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@DS127 No worries. All good. Take care 👍
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