Re: Oviraptor

[Tom Holtz <tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.gov>]

>What?   You mean Oviraptor is no longer considered to be a small, carnivorous
>- er, "egg-consuming" theropod?  This is news to me, an admitted amateur.
> Can someone elaborate?  The last classification I saw was something like:
>
> Theropoda-Tetanurae-Coelurosauria-Maniraptora-Oviraptorosauria-Oviraptoridae

How about:

Theropoda-Neotheropoda-Tetanurae-Avetheropoda-Coelurosauiria-"Eumaniraptora"
-Oviraptorosauria- Oviraptoridae

>>Does this classification still hold, or is it just the nature of beast itself
>which has undergone a bit of adjustment?  Are you saying that "theropod" is
>no longer an indication of an animal being a carnivore, or at least an
>omnivore?

It is still a theropod.  It may indeed be an egg eater, but the eggs it was
associated with were its own.

>>When incubation was mentioned, I understood that to say the eggs were
>possibly Oviraptor eggs.  If so, have there been any further studies on the
>eggs or fragments of eggs found with the specimen?  I thought I read where a
>specimen of Oviraptor was found "entangled" with a Protoceratops specimen; am
>I mistaken?  Was that a different dinosaur?  If not, what is the explanation
>of that finding?

The "Protoceratops" eggs were not from Protoceratops, but from Oviraptor,
as a series of new fossils conclusively documents.  The association of
those eggs with Protoceratops since the 1920s was based on the questionable
assumption that the most common skeletal fossil must be the layer of the
most common egg fossils in the Djadochta Formation.

                                
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.                                   
tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.gov
Vertebrate Paleontologist in Exile                  Phone:      703-648-5280
U.S. Geological Survey                                FAX:      703-648-5420
Branch of Paleontology & Stratigraphy
MS 970 National Center
Reston, VA  22092
U.S.A.