Re: Beipiaosaurus and sauropod ancestry

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/21/99 0:12:20 AM EST, qilongia@yahoo.com writes:

<< Really, it appears to be a weight-related feature, but hopefully this can 
be  clarified by further study >>

Don't think it's weight-related. Alxasaurus is a far smaller animal than 
Tyrannosaurus, yet Alxasaurus shows the segnosaurian foot whereas 
Tyrannosaurus has a typically theropodan (albeit massively built, of course) 
foot with highly reduced first toe. If it were purely a weight issue, one 
would expect tyrannosaurids and many other large theropods to show 
segnosaurian readaptation of the first toe.