OVIRAPTOR CAUDIPTERX: WHO WAS 1st?

[<darren.naish@port.ac.uk>]

As some of you may know, Nick Longrich is currently doing a world 
tour of museums and spectacular locations (actually, he may be back 
home now, I'm not sure). During his travels Nick stayed at my house 
for a while - as you might imagine we talked about myrmecophagous 
alvarezsaurids, secondary flightlessness in maniraptorans, armadillo 
teeth, the _Sinosauropteryx_ conspiracy, monophyly or not of 
noasaurids and so on. One thing Nick came up was: who was the first 
to propose that _Caudipteryx_ might actually be an oviraptorosaur? 
Well, after a few mins cruising the web I have the answer....

_Caudipteryx_ was unveiled to the world in the June 1998 edition of 
_National Geographic_, and on 23rd June 1998 the type specimen 
(plus other integument-bearing sinodinos) was unveiled to the US 
press and public. 

It's formal description and naming didn't occur until 1999 when Ji et 
al. (_Nature_ 393: 753-61) published. In that paper _Caudipteryx_ is 
posited as a sister-taxon to birds. By this time however there was 
already agreement on DML and among dinosaur afficianados 
elsewhere that _Caudipteryx_ was similar in some respects to 
oviraptorids and caenagnathids, and might even be an oviraptorosaur. 
This was mostly because of its short skull, mandible and hips.

By the time of the Ostrom Symposium in Florida (February 1999), 
those who work on theropod phylogeny seemed in agreement that 
_Caudipteryx_ was a possible basal oviraptorosaur - Norell, Sereno 
and Currie all reported this finding in their studies. Sereno was first to 
publish this (Sereno 1999, _Science_ 284: 2137-47). Subsequent 
studies, with the exception of Feduccia, Martin and Czerkas and Jones 
et al., have shown that a position of _Caudipteryx_ within 
Oviraptorosauria is well supported. 

So who was first? Drumroll..... on Monday 22nd June, Pete Buchholz 
noted on this list that 'Some features that I have been able to make out 
have made me wonder if this thing is an oviraptorosaur'. So far as I can 
tell this is the first written suggestion of oviraptorosaurian identity for 
this taxon. Well there you go: Pete, your insight serves you well. Pete 
is away right now (in Texas) so will be blissfully unaware of this 
accolade: when I write up the first European caudipterid rest assured 
I'll name it in his honour.

"In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart" 
        -- Anne Frank (and epigraph to Vonnegut, 1985).

DARREN NAISH 
PALAEOBIOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
Burnaby Building
Burnaby Road                           email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
Portsmouth UK                          tel (mobile): 0776 1372651     
P01 3QL                                tel (office): 023 92842244