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Re: when is a Lazarus Taxon not a Lazarus Taxon?
Tim Williams writes:
> I can't think of any obvious Lazarus taxa among the non-avian
> dinosaurs. Most of the newer discoveries have been very helpful at
> filling in ghost lineages, not creating new ones. Then again,
> maybe I'm not looking hard enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: _Dravidosaurus_. This Indian form
from the Coniacian seems to be a stegosaur (Yadagiri and Ayyasami
1979, Galton and Upchurch 2004), contra Chatterjee and Ruda 1996. If
that's correct, then it has a whopping forty-million-year ghost
lineage since the next-youngest known stegosaur, _Regnosaurus_ from
the Wealden (Hauterivian-Barremian) of England (Sereno and Upchurch
1995).
_/|_ ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ "Oooh! Ahhh! That's how it always starts. Then later there's
running and screaming" -- Ian Malcolm in _The Lost World:
Jurassic Park_