[philote]

I think you're missing the entire point of the article. It's attempting to classify a fictional, alien species with a real taxonomy (the only one we currently have available to us).

And yes, "just because they superficially resemble some arthropods in some features doesn't make them an arthropod".. but at the very beginning they point out they cannot use DNA sequences to help classify, so they are only using known physical characteristics.

[pavel_lishin]

Oh, I know the point. I'm just engaging in the same kind of nerd pedantry!