Lazy grad student seeks straight dope

["Jonathan R. Wagner" <znc14@ttacs1.ttu.edu>]

        Having just sacrificed a good day's worth of class reading to
(finally!) read Gauthier 1986 (which is, as all are of his papers,
absolutely delightful reading), I was struck by one issue.  _Hulsanpes
perlei_ appears to posses an arctometatarsus.  At least, this is the
conclusion one may reach from reading the character descriptions.  The
metatarsus is not figured, and I barely have the time to whip this e-mail
off, much less track down the origional article.
        Every article that I have read which has commented on this taxon has
referred it to the Dromaeosauridae, and various other folks (unattributed)
have suggested that it is at least a maniraptoran (sensu Holtz 1996).  Is
this due to a lack of derived characters of Troodontidae (e.g.
plesiomorphically elongate second phalanx of digit II), or is this due to
some other diagnostic feature which I am not aware of (e.g. reversed hallux?)?
 
        Thanks,
        Wagner
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jonathan R. Wagner                    "You can clade if you want to,     |
| Department of Geosciences              You can leave your friends behind |
| Texas Tech University                  Because your friends don't clade  |
| Lubbock, TX 79409                               and if they don't clade, |
|       *** wagner@ttu.edu ***           Then they're no friends of mine." |
|           Web Page:  http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~jrw6f             |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+