RE: oldest sauropod found

["Matthew Bonnan" <mbonnan@hotmail.com>]

Hi all:

Yeah, I got to review this paper prior to its publication, so I've been 
waiting anxiously to see it come out in press.  You can see some of my brief 
comments at: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030630/dino.html#

This is very cool because Antetonitrus helps to shake up current 
phylogenetic views on sauropod evolution.  Yates and Kitching suggest 
certain prosauropods were in fact basal sauropods.  Wow!  Yates has already 
suggested and hinted at this in previous articles, but Antetonitrus is sure 
to get people's attentions about this debate, which begs the question: are 
prosauropods monophyletic or not?

For me, as a functional morphologist and someone interested in the evolution 
of sauropod locomotion, what a neat juxtaposition of characters: a humerus 
that looks like a prosauropod, but stretched out; a manus that looks like 
cross between a sauropod's and a prosauropod's; etc., etc.  This means I 
need to look even more carefully at what prosauropods were doing with the 
forelimbs and manus, which sounds great to me -- I just returned from Berlin 
and Stuttgart, and I was able to get my hands on a number of prosauropod 
forelimbs.  Awesome.

I haven't been this fascinated or excited by early sauropods in quite awhile 
-- this "new" specimen will certainly help us better decipher early sauropod 
evolution.  In my personal opinion, I am really beginning to wonder if there 
is a prosauropod to sauropod grade, instead of a more monophyletic 
Prosauropoda.  I know this smacks against everything cladist, and I am not 
dissing the cladistics method (check the archives for my various posting on 
cladistics), but it will be interesting to see how and if Prosauropoda 
becomes reconstituted phylogenetically, and what that will mean the 
evolution of locomotion in such giant herbivores.

Can you tell I'm excited?  It's a good time to be a sauropod researcher. =)

Matt

Matthew F. Bonnan, Ph.D.
Dept. Biological Sciences
Western Illinois University
Macomb, IL 61455
(309) 298-2155
MF-Bonnan@wiu.edu
mbonnan@hotmail.com
www.wiu.edu/users/mfb100

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus