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Re: the importance of Qianosuchus



Plugging what is shown online in the excellent line drawing, Quianosuchus nests as the sister taxon to Ticinosuchus, which begets aeotosaurs. Their common ancestor was a sister to Vjushkovia.

I'd like to see that data matrix.

In the original paper, *Qianosuchus* comes out in Crurotarsi -- in a huge polytomy. That's why the poor beast hasn't received more attention: nobody knows what it is.

Incidentally, the... well... Standard Mandarin sound transcribed "q" is... somewhere between ts and ch, and heavily aspirated. It can occur in front of i and u (which is then pronounced the French way). Any vowels directly behind these belong to the same syllable, BTW, so that _qian_ is a single syllable that more or less rhymes with English "an".

Q also nests just below Turfanosuchus, the last known
common ancestor of crocs and dinos.

What? Are you really saying *T.* is a known common ancestor of crocs and dinos?!? For that, you would need to show that
- *T.* lacks any autapomorphies (good luck when the soft anatomy is not preserved... and not even the whole skeleton...)
- *T.* has the right stratigraphic age (IIRC it's much too young)
- the fossil record around the origin of Archosauria is so good that we should not expect to find yet another side branch (I'd bet _real money_ that it isn't -- we aren't talking about marine diatoms!).


These three reasons are why PAUP* _assumes a priori_ that no OTU is an ancestor of any other and would find real ancestors as the sister-groups of their descendants. (This can easily be simulated, and has been, even though a simple thought experiment should be enough.)

And its nice to know that none of the metatarsals are
reduced in diameter. That little fact has big implications for
Irmis's so-called "dinosauromorphs."

Please explain.