Re: Pteromimus and pterosaur origins

[Zach Armstrong <zach.armstrong64@yahoo.com>]

Hello List,

This is my first time sending something to the list, so hopefully I don't mess 
something up. It occurred to me to look up "Pteromimus" when David Peters was 
discussing pterosaur origins, as I had not heard of this species. A quick 
Google search brought me to the (huge--14.4 MB!) pdf of a PhD dissertation by 
Momchil Nikolaev
Atanassov (I hope mentioning this doesn't violate an embargo or something). 
David Peters seems to indicate that Pteromimus, and by extension, pterosaurs, 
are not sister taxa to dinosaurs, etc. However, Atanassov's abstract concludes 
with this obervation:

"A phylogenetic analysis of Archosauromorpha indicates that the two new
reptiles and pterosaurs are omithodiran archosaurs and form a
monophyletic clade that is the sister-group to Scleromochlus +
Dinosauromorpha. Pteromimus is the sistergroup of pterosaurs, and
Procoelosaurus is the sister-group to the clade Pteromimus +
Pterosauria."

I was wondering if anybody was aware of this paper, and what of its 
implications for pterosaur origins?

By the way, it is a HUGE paper, and takes an awful long time to download (its 
around 360 pgs, although "only" 160 pgs are the actual discussion, the rest is 
references and additional data), so I have not read the thing, just skimmed 
some relevant parts.

Zach

P.S.: Here is the address for the 
paper....http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-07312008-31295018533124/