RE: Yixian Psittacosaurs

["Mortensen, Bruce" <Bruce_Mortensen@affymax.com>]

          Just a quick personal observation - I was in China over the summer
and had the opportunity to visit sites at Beipiao, several local museums,
and the IVPP.    I have in front of me a photo of a Yi Xian psittacosaur
fossil with preserved skin impressions along the humerus which we saw at the
Yi Zhou Fossil Museum.   While I cannot make assumptions for all
ornithischians, I can say that the specimen we saw had definite tubercules
or scales along it's shoulder and upper arm area, with absolutely no
indication of fibrous decoration.   There were a number of unpublished
specimens to be seen in China; we can only hope that they get described and
published in a timely fashion, because there is an awful lot of data to add
to what we think we know. 

        -Bruce           

> Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 10:49:12 -0400
> From: Josh Smith <smithjb@sas.upenn.edu>
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Yixian _Psittacosaurus_
> Message-ID: <37E102F1.53E9A942@sas.upenn.edu>
> 
> 
> In a message dated 9/16/99 6:35:33 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> LOKICORP@compuserve.com writes:
> 
> << we haven't
>  found ornithischians from the Yixian (or any other formation) with a
>  similar degree of preservation. >>
> 
> Then  DV wrote:
>   Yixian psittacosaurs exhibit the scaley tuberculed type of hide
> according to posts from June of last year. DV.
> 
> 1. Please don't interpret this as my supporting the idea that
> ornithischians are feathered or that we should "expect" to see it in
> them because there are saurischians with such structures.
> 
> 2.  There is, to my knowledge (and I am about 98% sure that nothing
> published to date contradicts this, but at the rate that stuff comes out
> of this bloody place, who knows...) only a single psittacosaur from the
> Yixian (interested parties are welcome to look at the faunal list from
> my Ostrom Symposium ms).  This psittacosaur is, to my understanding
> represented by a single specimen from Sihetun (from Sihetun itself, I am
> pretty sure, not from Jianshanghou or Heitizigou or the like).
> 
> 3.  As I write this, I am sitting here looking at a photo of this
> critter, _Psittacosaurus_ sp., that I took.  My memory and the photo
> show only a small place on the slab (the normal Yixian siltstone bedding
> plain with the specimen preserved mostly in only two dimensions) where
> any sort of "carbonized remains" or "integumentary structure" is
> preserved.  There certainly are not any feathers, but there is also no
> real evidence for any structure to the hide.  Indeed, it would be a
> stretch to say that this black stuff MUST be related to the specimen.
> 
> -Josh
> 
> Josh Smith
> Department of Earth and Environmental Science
> University of Pennsylvania
> 471 Hayden Hall
> 240 South 33rd Street
> Philadelphia, PA  19104-6316 USA
> 
>