Re: Archosauromorph classification & Thecodonts

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/22/00 9:24:45 AM EST, tholtz@geol.umd.edu writes:

<< This specimen does not show any apparent archosauromorph characters, much
 less archosaurian.  Even champsosaurs and rhynchosaurs have more apparent
 derived features shared with archosaurs than this puppy... >>

..and so on. Why, in reading this kind of stuff, do I always get the distinct 
and unsettling feeling that we all look at these peculiar specimens and see 
>only< what we want to see in them (something I'm as guilty of as anyone 
else, I imagine)? Protoavis and Longisquama are, if they are what they have 
been described as, quite inconvenient to some hypotheses of dinosaur and bird 
origins, and so all of a sudden all their archosaurian features, etc., are 
artifacts or missing or composite or whatever. Anything but present at face 
value.

Give me Just So Stories any time.