Comments on the proposed conservation of Buettneria Case, 1922 (Amphibia) 1 (Case 3420)

I am writing to oppose the petition of Lucas et al. for the ICZN to use their plenary power to conserve the Late Triassic metoposaurid generic name Buettneria Case, 1922. I support the proposals in the comment by Hausdorf (BZN 65: 60–62) to suppress both the metoposaurid genus Buettneria Case, 1922 and the Orthopteran genus Buettneria Karsh, 1888, in favour of the senior homonym Buettneria Simroth, 1888 (Mollusca). His comment also illustrated that I, along with Lucas et al., had failed to notice the senior homonym, Buettneria Simroth, 1888 (Mollusca, Gastropoda). Hausdorf’s argument against the conservation of the metoposaurid generic name cited Van Goethem (1977) in outlining the priority of Buettneria Simroth, 1888 over Buettneria Karsch, 1888 (1889), and Buettneria Case, 1922.
The metoposaurid genus Buettneria Case, 1922, is not without change in the past. The metoposaurid taxon Buettneria perfecta (Koskinonodon perfectus) was synonymized by Colbert and Imbrie (1956) as a junior synonym of the metoposaurid genus Eupelor Cope, 1868 and then Chowdhury (1965) synonymized the taxon with the metoposaurid genus Metoposaurus Lydekker, 1890. In Hunt’s (1993) revision of the Metoposauridae, he resurrected Buettneria Case, 1922 and listed Metoposaurus (in part), Koskinonodon, Borborophagus, and Eupelor (in part) in the synonymy of the genus. This shows that the metoposaurid genus has not had a stable past and the suppression of Buettneria Simroth, 1888, in favour of a junior homonym for stability of nomenclature is not justified. I myself have used the name Buettneria Case, 1922 in the past (Houle & Mueller, 2004) and the preoccupation of the generic name was brought to my attention through this research.
My original petition to the Commission in 2005 (Case 3358) received the response (Andrew Polaszek, pers. comm., 24 July 2006) that, after review, a ruling by the Commission was unnecessary as the petition was straightforward and just needed to be published. The fact that Hausdorf (BZN 65: 60–62) points out that the ‘senior’ homonym I cited was actually a junior homonym of Buettneria Simroth, 1888, re-enforces the proposal that the metoposaurid genus Buettneria Case, 1922, should be suppressed and replaced with its junior synonym Koskinonodon Branson & Mehl, 1929.

Additional References.
Chowdhury, T. Roy. 1965. A new metoposaurid amphibian from the upper Triassic Maleri Formation of Central India. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 250: 1–52.
Colbert, E.H. & Imbrie, J. 1956. Triassic metoposaurid amphibians. American Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 110(6): 399–452.
Houle, M.O. & Mueller, B. 2004. A New Occurrence of Buettneria bakeri (Temnospondyli: Metoposauridae) from the Norian (Cooper Canyon Formation, Dockum Group) of West Texas. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 24(3): 73A.