More New Refs

["Jerry D. Harris" <LOKICORP@compuserve.com>]

Hi All -

        A couple more things I've come across recently:

Lockley, M.G., Ritts, B.D., and Leonardi, G.  1999.  Mamma track
assemblages from the Early Tertiary of China, Peru, urope, and North
America.  _Palaios_ 14(4):  398-404.

        Although not clear from the title, the article is of some interest
to dinosaur workers because it notes that some tracks from Peru, described
in '95 as ornithopod, are actually 3-toed ungulate tracks (the slab on
which the track are located also contain bird, lizard, and carnivoran
tracks), and aren't Late Cretaceous.  They are similar to newly discovered
tracks in China that were from an "Upper Cretaceous" formation, as well as
to Eocene mammal tracks from Colorado and France and Spain.  Lockley et al.
once again use their term "palichnostratigraphy" for the (IMHO) extremely
dubious practice of using footprints as a basis for correlation.

        Much more of interest to the list (and to the theropodophiles in
particular) is:

Tykoski, R.S.  1998.  The osteology of _Syntarsus kayentakatae_ and its
implications for ceratosaurid phylogeny.  Unpublished Masters Thesis,
University of Texas at Austin, 217 pp.

        The abstract for this thesis is available on-line at:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/GEO/Thesisabstracts.html#tykoski

...about 4/5 down the page.  I only just got this and haven't read it yet,
but will be important for early theropod phylogenetics.  The paper fully
redescribes _Syntarsus kayentakatae_ as well as a theropod previously
referred to in the literature as the "Shake 'N' Bake" theropod, as a new
ceratosaurian taxon.  Perhaps the most important, obvious thing about _S.
kayentakatae_ is that it has, for the first confirmed time in the
literature in a ceratosaur, a furcula, which pushes this feature _way_ back
into the early days of the Theropoda.  The various phylogenetic analyses
generally put both species of _Syntarsus_ into a clade with _Coelophysis_
the next taxon out; some analyses have _Coelophysis_ and the "Shake 'N'
Bake" theropod as sisters to _Liliensternus_; all of these theropods occur
as more derived taxa than _Dilophosaurus_, interestingly.  Also on the
cladograms, _Elaphrosaurus_ falls out as basal to a clade including both
_Carnotaurus_ and _Ceratosaurus_.  Have yet to read what is supporting all
this...  The only bad thing about the thesis is that the photographs of the
specimens appear to have been scanned into the computer and then printed
out a comparatively low resolution and are not very clear.  Hopefully, this
will all be rectified when a published version is issued!

        Just FYI...

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                     Jerry D. Harris
                 Fossil Preparation Lab
          New Mexico Museum of Natural History
                   1801 Mountain Rd NW
               Albuquerque  NM  87104-1375
                 Phone:  (505) 899-2809
                  Fax: ; (505) 841-2866
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