RE: More New Refs

["Augustus T. White" <augwhite@neosoft.com>]

Very interesting find (both the dinosaur and the paper!).   In the 
credit-where-its-due department, this was a *doctoral* dissertation.

I recently ran across an abstract of J.P. Bailey and M.E. DeMont (1991). The 
function of the wishbone. Can. J. Zool. 69: 2751-2758 at 
http://juliet.stfx.ca/~edemont/abstracts/jason.html.  Those authors suggest 
that the furcula functions as a secondary energy storage mechanism for 
respiration during flight.  For those of us who tend to credit the evidence 
that theropods used a hepatic pump for respiration and have been looking around 
for a suitable early mechanism for transition between the hepatic pump and 
avian-style respiration, this may be an interesting combination of ideas.  This 
isn't even enough of an idea to call it speculation.  Interesting, none the 
less, if it turns out that the furcula is a very early development ...

  --Toby White

On Tuesday, August 10, 1999 4:05 PM, Jerry D. Harris 
[SMTP:LOKICORP@compuserve.com] wrote:

[snip]

>         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  Unpublished Masters Thesis,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!