Oh and Floater, if apes are monkeys then humans are monkeys too. 
Well, some of our classifications, based on observable features, are looking a little off now that we can observe the genes.
Sometimes the environment (for example, marsh vs. grassland) will make you more than our kinfolk will.
I don’t think Bakker was suggesting that, but rather simply sticking all the quadrupeds together and all the bipeds together. That, and Bakker’s always come across (to me, at least) as something of a loon, anyway…
The Dinosaur Heresies was written around the same time as Gauthier’s (and others’) cladistic re-examinations of the Dinosauria; such re-examinations reaffirmed that Saurischia and Ornithischia are, indeed, monophyletic, and that sauropods are members of the former.
Given that the only categories considered in cladistics are those of “organism together with all its decendants”, where does that leave the prokaryotes? All eukaryotes are decended from prokaryotes, so any clade which contained all prokaryotes would necessarily contain all other organisms, as well. So how does cladistics refer to prokaryotes, as a group?
Well, the issue is most easily resolved by simply not adhering to the eukaryote / prokaryote dichotomy. If eukaryotes descended from prokaryotes, but are considered separately, then “prokaryotes” (as typically defined) is necessarily paraphyletic, thus not a natural clade.
Generally speaking, prokaryotes are thought to have descended from an Archaeobacterial ancestor, somtime prior to the Aerchaeobacteria / Eubacteria split. See here for a visual. Note, however, thast the monophyly of Archaea itself is also questionable (things do get a little fuzzy when looking back towards the origins of life, after all); see the Tree of Life page.
As I read this stuff (with much interest) I have to keep reminding myself that “split” doesn’t mean the same here as it does in real life. Not like an actual branch of an actual tree. In this thread’s context “split” means “diverged from over a heck of a long time”.
Thanks, that Tree of Life is a great page.
Carry on. 