"Pinnants" (was Re: BIRDY _ARCHAEOPTERYX_)

["John V Jackson" <jjackson@interalpha.co.uk>]

--Original Message-- From: Jerry D. Harris <102354.2222@compuserve.com>Date:
07 November 1998 17:07



>Message text written by INTERNET:m_troutman@hotmail.com
>>Padian also described some Morrison
maniraptorans or maniraptoriforms. <<

>        And, lest we forget, the hand Osborn attributed to _Ornitholestes_
is now demonstrably referable to _Coelurus_ which, thanks to a couple of
new specimens (postered at SVP, to be described soon) clearly show
Kimmeridgian maniraptoriforms (older than the Tithonian _Archaeopteryx_).


<Jerry D. Harris
>

And good luck to them. The mani's I claim to be absent from the K (except
olshevskyans v. close to Archae) are the "maniraptora", which is oviraptors,
'dromeosaurs' and birds.  I was not referring to "maniraptoriforms" because
that would include _Coelurus_, _Compsognathus_, _Sinosauropteryx_ and
_Ornitholestes_, which I don't want as Archae descendants.  However it also
contains the arctometatarsalia: ie the tyrannosaur and
bullatosaur(troodonts/ornithomimids) groups, which I do want.  I did start
by referring to the group as the Arctos/mani group, which would have been a
tautology had I meant maniraptoriforms which of course subsumes arctos.

Of course, I don't actually agree with groupings which put troodonts closer
to compsognathids for example than to birds.  There is a need, at least with
me, for a group containing just these (ex)feathered forms.  Turning to the
bible, we see that GSP did not at that time advocate such a group -
avetheropods looking very close to maniraptoriforms, and protobirds
excluding arctos.  I would therefore like to erect, if I may, the suborder
"Ffoobati": feathered fliers, other obvious birds, and "theropod" imitators.
(They're all theropods really of course.)  If the double-f doesn't appeal,
maybe we could go to the Indo-European word "Pet", meaning to rush or fly,
and giving rise to "feather", the latin equivalent "pinna" etc.  Or maybe
"Pinnants" would be better than "Pets", since it would embody the character
defining the clade.  (I don't mind cladistics as such, it's other people's I
don't like :-) .)  Or maybe, since they have been traditionally defined as
such, anything with proper feathers or which had them in its ancestry, could
just be called "Birds".  But that would lead to confusion, so I shall refer
to all members of arctometatarsalia and maniraptora (in TMKeeseys structure)
as "Pinnants".

Somewhere inside there, we now have to place "Uncinants" - everything with
(or ex)uncinant processes.  Actually, that looks very close to maniraptora
but I'm not sure about _Protarchaeopteryx_ or the therizinosaurs, and the
enants will subsume the uncinants, or less likely be a sister group.  Enants
might either subsume the arctos or siblate them.  If the arctos did split
off before the enants, they wouldn't have had much time to do it, but they
may have done, because the whole lot of them would have been going faster
than Dave Martill's landrover in the first 10mys after Archae.

Maniraptoriforms
 |   .........
 |   .........
 |   Pinnantes
      |   ? Enantornithiformios
      |   ? Uncinantes
      |   ? Arctometatarsalia



There.


JJ