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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_