NON-ORNITHOPOD AGILISAURUS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Pete Buchholz must once again be celebrating the existence of dino-l. 
Perhaps. 'jconrad' wrote..

> _Agilisaurus_ appears much too derived to be a sister taxon 
> to_Lesothosaurus_. 

Some of you will be aware that Paul Barrett got to personally 
examine the _Agilisaurus_ material during his recent Dinosaur 
Society funded expedition to China (there were several reports on 
what Paul (and Paul Upchurch) saw in _The Dinosaur Report_: this is 
where you will see the first ever photo and mention of _Shanxia_). 
Paul says that _Agilisaurus_, though conventionally regarded as a 
hypsilophodont, is apparently too primitive to belong amongst higher 
ornithopods and, in a paper he is co-authoring with David Norman, 
will show that _Agilisaurus_ belongs closer to the ornithischian 
stem.

We should expect a major revision in our understanding of small 
so-called ornithopods over the next decade. I am wondering when 
someone will show that marginocephalians fall into a late Jurassic 
clade of euornithopods:) Unless their precursors really are the 
heterodontosaurs.

"Rats make direct attacks on about 14, 000 persons annually in the 
United States, and occasionally inflict mortal wounds".

DARREN NAISH
darren.naish@port.ac.uk