RE: Dinos galore [snip], no Tendaguru

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Tim Williams
>
> Nick Gardner wrote:
>
> >I've been reading some of the new papers (I don't have them all yet), in
> >particular, Currie et al.'s phylogeny paper.  I don't like  that it
> >excludes ornithomimosaurs and maniraptorans since they are
> closer taxa to
> >the tyrannosaurids than Allosaurus
>
> Ahhh... but are they?  I recall seeing at least one fairly recent
> phylogeny
> that found tyrannosaurs to be the next outgroup above carnosaurs.
>  Perhaps
> it was an AMNH paper.

Nevertheless, in those studies (the AMNH ones, Rauhut, my last few SVP
phylogenies, etc.) ornithomimosaurs + maniraptors (together,
Maniraptoriformes) are STILL closer to tyrannosaurids than are allosaurids.

On the other head (:-), there aren't too many well described basal
maniraptoriform (or basal coelurosaur) skulls, while there IS a lot of
detail of the nitty-gritty of Allosaurus to help  potentially polarize
characters.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796