new paper on dino evolution

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

Howdy, all!

Just came from the library, where there is a new (to me, anyway) paper on
dinosaur evolution by Paul Sereno:

Sereno, P.C.  1997.  The origin and evolution of dinosaurs.  Annual Review
of Earth and Planetary Sciences 1997:435-489.

For those who were at SVP 1996, many of the new phylogenies he showed there
are to be found in this review paper (but no data matrix, dammit!!).

I haven't finished reading it yet, but here are some quick comments and
observations:

New taxonomic names:
Cerapoda has been replaced with Neornithischia.  Don't know if this is a
correction (perhaps the name was occupied?) or if this is simply the node
for which the stem-based group is Cerapoda.

Hadrosauriformes for Iguanodontidae + Hadrosauridae.

Macronaria (clade containing Haplocanthosaurus, Camarasaurus,
Brachiosauridae, and Titanosauria) is finally published, but listed as
coming from the soon-to-be published Wilson and Sereno sauropod phylogeny.

A new theropod clade name, Paraves, for Deinonychosauria + Aves.  (Dammit,
there is a paper in review with a different name for the same clade.  Ah,
well, c'est la taxonomie!).

[Actually, there is a typo in the classification table: Paraves is listed as
coming from Wilson & Sereno, and Macronaria as simply a new taxon to this
paper.]

Corrected taxonomic names:
Nodosaurinae and Pachycephalosaurinae (corrections for the
taxonomically-improper Panoplosaurinae and Domocephalinae in Sereno's 1986
paper).

Figure 5 is quite nice: it illustrates the known position of the acquisition
of typical "avian" features throughout theropod history.  Figure 7 does the
same for herbivorous adaptations in ornithischian history.

I'll post additional comments after I get done reading it.

Take care, all.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661