Re: Fossil Discovery Threatens Theory of Birds' Evolution

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@home.com>]

At 08:21 PM 25/06/2000 -0400, ELurio@aol.com wrote:

> Just to show that convergance of the kind I've talked about is indeed a
> possiblilty. That is relevent. BTW. If cuttlefish are squids, so are octopi.

No, they are not.  Cuttlefish. octopuses (the correct plural, BTW - 
"octopi" is incorrect as the
Latin "pus" has the plural "podes", not "pi" [as in "Antipodes"]) and squid 
all belong to the Coleoidea, a clade of cephalopods with an internal, 
reduced or missing shell and two gills (the other living group, the 
Nautiloidea, has four gills).  However, within the coleoids the octopuses 
belong to the Octopoda, which also includes the Vampire Squid 
Vampyroteuthis, while squids and cuttlefish belong to separate branches 
(Teuthida and Sepiida) of the Decapoda.

> If they are the same class anyway, which they indeed are, and the convergence
> involved seems "interesting but not all that remarkable," which is also the
> case, then convergence between two anmiotes, which are the same superclass,
> shouldn't be either.

This would be true if the convergence was as superficial, or involved as 
few characters, as that between the shell of Spirula and that of ammonites; 
as I mentioned earlier there are striking differences between the two.  No 
modern teuthologist would mistake Spirula for an ammonite.  However, what 
you are talking about with theropods would amount to massive convergence 
across a whole range of skeletal characters - so extreme, in fact, that no 
modern palaeontologist, including experts studying these animals in 
particular, has recognized it if it exists.  Your analogy might work for 
something like (say) marsupial and placental moles, or snakes and eels, but 
it hardly applies here.

> Um... I didn't say that either, and the term is "graptolite".  And what are
> graptolites supposed to be convergent to?>>
>
> Okay, it's a thingie that was found near New Guinea a decade or so back.
> There was a possibility of a ghost lineage of four hundred million years if
> it wasn't convergance.

The specific find you refer to was made off New Caledonia, and was 
described by Noel Dilly.  It is a member of the group of hemichordates 
(acorn worms) known as pterobranchs.  These are colonial animals very 
similar to what we know of graptolites; in fact Dr. Dilly (and others) are 
convinced that the two groups are closely related if not actually 
identical.  The chief functional difference was that individual graptolites 
produced a long spine called a nema projecting fron their locations in the 
colony, but pterobranchs did not and, it was thought, were incapable of 
doing so.  However, the new find was of a species, Cephalodiscus 
graptolitoides, that did produce a nema.  Dr. Dilly announced this find as 
a "living graptolite", but he was speaking structurally rather than 
phylogenetically; C. graptolitoides is not the only species in its genus, 
and the others do not produce nemas.  In effect he was arguing that there 
was now no reason to separate the two groups.

Once again, the "convergence" here is related to a single feature among 
closely-related animals, and is therefore not equivalent to the extensive 
multi-character convergences that would be necessary if theropods were 
polyphyletic (in particular if one of the lines you propose was closer to 
Longisquama than thjan to other theropods).
--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2          mailto:ornstn@home.com