Re: Revised Ornithischian Classification

["Mickey Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer11@msn.com>]

Ken Kinman wrote-

> I personally
> would love to see Mickey and Jaime get together and do such an analysis
and
> publish their results.

As much as I would like to see the results of a well done ornithischian
analysis, I'm certainly not the one to do it (even in part).  My knowledge
is centered on theropods and I would need many months of research and a lot
more references before I could attempt such a project to the point I would
trust my results.  Now Pete and Jaime on the other hand...

> And also resolve some differences, such as whether
> Tenontosaurus dossi makes that genus holophyletic or paraphyletic (Mickey
> pretty persuasively argues that it is the latter).

Here's a good place to point out something I've been meaning to tell the
list in the past few days (nothing against Ken, it's just a good example)-
People shouldn't be so quick to accept such suggestions as fact when they
are simply part of an e-mail (especially from a non-professional like
myself).  When I study a taxon for a few days to write a Details on...
segment, I feel my conclusions are fairly accurate.  But in the present case
for Tenontosaurus, I was more refuting Pete's statement that the genus is
definitely monophyletic than arguing for paraphyly.  I listed merely those
characters suggested by Winkler et al. to support paraphyly and monophyly.
The only contribution I had was pointing out why the monophyletic characters
could be misleading.  There's a very good chance the paraphyletic characters
are problematic too.  For example, perhaps even if T. dossi's postpubis is
longer than T. tillettorum's, some more derived iguanodonts may also have
longer postpubes than T. tillettorum.  It's all uncertain until someone does
the proper study, though I do think paraphyly sounds better at the
moment....

Mickey Mortimer