Re: Owenetta was Re: turtle origins?

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Eric,
    In all fairness, I believe the main challenge they made was to your 
statement that this evidence was being "suppressed".  Owenetta is a 
procolophonoid----I classified them as Order Procolophoniformes in 1994, and 
yes they are anapsids.  I listed Order Testudiniformes next, also as 
anapsids, and possible sister group to Procolophoniformes.  That was pretty 
much universally accepted in the early 90's.
    This viewpoint is not being suppressed, but it is now being challenged. 
 The putative synapomorphies shared by those groups may be homoplastic 
(convergence), and now putative synapomorphies between testudines and 
various diapsid groups are being evaluated.  I find that very exciting, and 
if turtles are diapsids, I will move them down next to Sauropterygiformes or 
whatever diapsid order they turn out to be related to.
                    ------Ken Kinman
*****************************************************
> From: ELurio@aol.com
> To: kinman@hotmail.com, dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Owenetta was Re: turtle origins?
> Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 08:35:01 EDT
>
> I've been slammed over a comment I've made about the origins of turtles. 
> Many
> of you out there think I made the whole thing up and were chortleing about 
> my
> "foolish" pronouncements, and challenged me to put up or shut up.
>
> Okay.
>
> In the spring of 1991, Nature had a cover story on a Permian critter called
> Owenetta, which was described by Robert Reisz and Michel Laurin, and
> cladistically anaylized to show many points of similarity with turtles, so
> much so, that Reisz and Laurin claimed Owenetta as a possible turtle 
> ancestor.
>
> Owenetta was clearly an anapsid.
>
> eric l
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