Re: Dinosaurs with Pygostyles

["Jerry D. Harris" <LOKICORP@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by INTERNET:eamalitz@hotmail.com
>This apart i felt that Elzanowski's characters may be easily prone to 
convergence than some of the characters supporting the Dromeosaur-avian 
clade. Agains I ask why the plaeotologists do not follow a fixed score 
matrix to transform their characters with appropriate weights.<

        Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is not a _part_ of most
phylogenetic analyses the factor of the _number_ of similarities?  That is,
one or two characters may certainly be convergent, but is not convergence a
less parsimonious conclusion when _many_ similarities are shared between
taxa?  Thus, a pygostyle may be convergent, but a pygostyle coupled with a
large number of other synapomorphies is probably _not_ convergent.

                _,_
           ____/_\,)                    ..  _   
--____-===(  _\/                         \\/ \-----_---__
           /\  '                        ^__/>/\____\--------
__________/__\_ ____________________________.//__.//_________

                     Jerry D. Harris
                 Fossil Preparation Lab
          New Mexico Museum of Natural History
                   1801 Mountain Rd NW
               Albuquerque  NM  87104-1375
                 Phone:  (505) 841-2809
                  Fax: ; (505) 841-2808
               LOKICORP@compuserve.com