not until modern times: at beginning of 20th cen. numerous bizarre species [now extinct] of Phylum Steamolophyta and Electrolophyta dominated, with Phylum Gasolinolophyta in minority)
Proposed Criteria for Basing Phylogenies:
The following is only a small sampling of the numerous proposals in the paleocarriage literature.
A. Number of wheels: It has long been recognized that three-wheeled carriages are typically more primitive than four-wheeled carriages. For example, the earliest fossil of a steam powered carriage (Phylum Steamolophyta) was a tricycle, the Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, 1769. Likewise many early species in Gasolinolophyta, e.g., genus Benz, all species from 1885-1890. The problems with this criterion, however, are serious. (1) There are numerous two-wheeled autolocomotes extant today that are very sophisticated and evolutionarily advanced, e.g., the species Harley davidson, and numerous others, in the family Motorocyclidae. Yet it is generally assumed that the two-wheeled species must be more primitive than either three- or four-wheeled species. (2) To further complicate matters, the vast majority of the markedly primitive heterolocomotes in Kingdom Prokarriageota are four-wheeled (most of the simplest and oldest wagons)!
B. Open versus Closed Carriages: Another general assumption often seen in the literature is that an open carriage (with no roof, no or few windows, etc.) is a primitive condition, and that closed carriages represent a major phyletic advance. The problem here is that some members of Kingdom Prokarriageota, both extinct and extant, were or are closed (e.g., covered wagons, royal coaches of several cultures), and some modern carriages are open (e.g., subspecies convertibilis can be found in many if not most extant classes of Phylum Gasolinolophyta, especially in the family Sportscaridae.
C. Number of cylinders: It has also been proposed that an increasing number of cylinders would be a useful criterion for working out phyletic relationships within Phylum Gasolinolophyta. This view has been greatly strengthened by the discovery of several species in Genus Benz, the oldest fossil dating to 1885, a fossil of Genus Lambert (1891), and two closely related species in Genus Duryea, species frank and species charles (c 1892-93), all of which had one-cylinder gasoline engines. A major problem with this proposal is that the number of cylinders seems to reach a peak in the Mesozoic Era of the ultralarge classic cars; it is not uncommon to find V-8's and straight-12's in the time frame 1925-1942 when the luxurious fast motorcar reached a level never to be achieved again in carriage history so far. Well-known species in this prolific category include Rolls royce from Great Britain, Hispano suiza from Spain and France, as well as representative species in the genera Bugatti, Delage, Delahaye, Hotchkiss, Talbot, and Voisin of France; Dusenberg, Cadillac, Packard and Pierce-Arrow of the United States; Horch, Maybach, and Mercedes-Benz of Germany; genus Minerva of Belgium, and Isotta-Fraschini of Italy. All of these specimens are believed by scientists to have been very fast (90 to 130 mph), comfortable, and exquisitely luxurious (e.g., some fossils have been found with remains of upholstery in matched ostrich hide with ivory buttons, dashboards in rosewood, etc.). The question of why these marvelous carriages went extinct is still a matter of much debate among paleocarraigeologists today, but one widely accepted theory is that a catastrophic collapse of the market in 1929 so altered the economic climate that many species of the Mesozoic Era simply could not survive. Another problem with the number-of-cylinders hypothesis is that many of our most modern species (since the Pleistocene began in the 1960's) have only four cylinders, and a few only three. This phenomenon of an evolutionary regression to smaller engines appears to be worldwide in its scope.
D. Type of carburetor: It has been suggested that a series of gradually more advanced features in the carburetor, clearly preserved in the fossil record, would pr