Method
While the method has its greatest value when extant species are used for bracketing, the method itself does not not require that both bracketing groups have extant members, nor that the species or group to be bracketed is extinct. The only real requisite is that the two bracketing species/groups be better known, with regard to the trait in question, than the species to be bracketed is.
Read more about this topic: Phylogenetic Bracketing
Famous quotes containing the word method:
“The method of painting is the natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.... I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.”
—Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
“In child rearing it would unquestionably be easier if a child were to do something because we say so. The authoritarian method does expedite things, but it does not produce independent functioning. If a child has not mastered the underlying principles of human interactions and merely conforms out of coercion or conditioning, he has no tools to use, no resources to apply in the next situation that confronts him.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)