Re: NOASAURS AND DACENTRURID DEBUT...

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

>NOASAURUS (Here we go Mikiel..)
>
>I haven't seen any material published on Noasaurus recently. Is there any? And,
>as it's been lacking from recent theropodian phylogenies, what is the current
>consensus on its phy. position? Who believes that it is an abelisaur? Does
>anybody not? Any help received would be extremely... er.. helpful. Many thanks.
>(If you haven't heard of this little beast, it's a South American Upper Cret.
>mimic of the Northern Hemisphere dromaeosaurids, having a sickle claw of
>superficial similarity to the latter, but being quite different in detailed
>structure. So an excellent example of convergent evolution.)

I should have something to say about it around, oh, November 1 ;-)  (And
Bonaparte had a paper about abelisaurids and Noasaurus in Historical
Biology some years ago - and showed pretty convincingly that it is very
close to abelisaurids).

>And what about Alvarezsaurus? This was recently restored in a kid's dinosaur
>magazine as a little troodontid-type theropod with a tail about 4 times the
>length of its body. Is this interpretation based on anything recently
>published?

The only publication on Alvarezsaurus so far is Bonaparte's 1991 monograph.
As for my opinion - again, wait until Nov. 1 (or, actually, whenever this
year's abstracts come out).  Fernando Novas has some papers on this critter
in press, and has already revealed (at the Gondwana Dinosaur conference)
material he is calling "Patagonykus", which links Alvarezsaurus and
Mononykus!  I am VERY interested in seeing this...

>DACENTRURIDAE
>
>A new family of Stegosauria proposed by Olshevsky and Ford 1993. First the
>Polacanthidae, then the....

So far including only Dacentrurus and Regnosaurus.  However, Barrett and
Upchurch's recent paper shows that Regnosaurus is closer to Huayangosaurus.
Ah, well...

                                
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.                                   
tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.gov
Vertebrate Paleontologist                           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.