Response to Bousfield and LeBlond: Shooting Pipefish in a Barrel; or, Sauropterygian "Mega-Serpents" and Occam's Razor

Abstract

In their response to our recent article (Woodley et al., 2011), Bousfield and LeBlond (2011) argue on the basis of purported morphological and behavioral differences that the case for Hagelund's juvenile 'Cadborosaurus' being a pipefish is weakened into triviality. We note several major problems with their response and feel that their dismissive tone indicates a biased and unscientific approach to the investigation of this subject. Firstly, note that Bousfield and LeBlond (2011) thought that, by attempting to dismiss our pipefish identification, they had completed their task of critiquing our paper. While their 'critique' is grossly inadequate in any case, note that they made no mention of the assorted additional fish taxa also found by us (Woodley et al., 2011) to be more similar to the Hagelund specimen than the specimen was to their 'Cadborosaurus' construct.