Re: BRADYCNEME, NUTHETES, WYLEYIA

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/3/99 6:32:23 AM EST, darren.naish@port.ac.uk writes:

<< Angela Milner has reexamined _Nuthetes_ and presented results at the  
Purbeck Limestone meeting earlier this year. _Nuthetes_ is a dromaeosaurid! 
Incidentally, the 'granicones' regarded by Owen (1879) as part of _Nuthetes_ 
have in recent years been referred to _Echinodon_ as this taxon has been 
considered a possible basal thyreophoran. Sereno (1999) and Barrett (1999), 
however, show that _Echinodon_ is a late-surviving heterodontosaur... so, 
could heterodontosaurs have been armoured?? Or might this mean that the 
referral is still not correct. >>

So I can at last, and let's hope for the final time, actually remove the 
asterisk from Nuthetes in my lists?! So far among opinions I have accumulated 
about Nuthetes, the theropod opinions have outweighed the lacertilian 
opinions, e.g., Ralph Molnar also agrees that it is a small theropod. The 
published illustrations (which is all I have to go by) are, however, 
insufficient to decide the issue; the specimen itself must be reexamined and 
redescribed.

Published the opinion on Echinodon as being close to heterodontosaurids in my 
article with Tracy Ford on heterodontosaurs for Gakken Mook in 1994:

Olshevsky, G. & Ford, T. L., 1994. "The Origin and Evolution of the 
Heterodontosaurians," Kyoryugaku Saizensen [Dino-Frontline] 8: 74?97 
[illustrations by T. L. Ford; in Japanese].

This article includes the only published illustration (as figure 14) so far 
of the little jaws of the Fruita "echinodont" found in Colorado by George 
Callison years ago. These also look very heterodontosaurian, although the 
cheek teeth are much less derived than the corresponding closely-packed 
chisel-shaped teeth of true heterodontosaurids. They rather resemble the 
thick teeth of Revueltosaurus (which are also illustrated in the article). 
The two front dentary teeth are fanglike (one is big, and the other, ahead of 
the former, is emergent).

If you like pachycephalosaurs (and who doesn't, eh?), our Gakken article  on 
heterodontosaurians is a must-have--as indeed the whole issue is; Tracy 
illustrated the type skulls and skeletons of all the taxa and you can see 
them side by side. Of course, a few concepts now need to be updated: E.g., 
Stygymoloch's head spikes are known to be less vertical, and Majungatholus is 
a theropod and should be removed from the phylogeny. (I could have been 
bolder in the article, since Majungatholus seemed quite out of place when I 
constructed the phylogeny; but everyone else was thinking it was a 
pachycephalosaur. If you look at Tracy's drawing, you can see how different 
the frontals are from those of other pachies--but they're just not different 
enough, I guess.) Although I wrote the text, Tracy was a true coauthor in the 
sense that we spent much time discussing the ideas therein before they went 
into written form.

If you ever get hold of a copy of issue #8, you might be interested to know 
that the fellow in the cowboy hat in the Wild Tyranno whiskey ad on pages 
12-13 is none other than Masaaki Inoue, the magazine's editor in chief. Other 
great features include an article by Ralph Molnar on Minmi, a 
well-illustrated article on dinosaur illustration by Mark Hallett, and 
another piece on pachy skulls by Yoshio Ito. Gakken did this series right.