|
:-) I'm back (nothing dino-related to report from
the French mediterranean coast, alas) and have finished reading the 720-plus
e-mails I found (which took me 2 days). In those 2 weeks I read, among
other things, a museum guide I had got for birthday:
Matthias Mäuser, Angelika Bezold, Beate Bugla,
Giuseppe Völkl: Panzerfisch, Flugsaurier & Co.. Ein Streifzug durch die
Evolution der Wirbeltiere. Führer zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung des
Naturkunde-Museums Bamberg, Dr. Friedrich Pfeil 2000
While, as expected, lagging behind in many aspects,
this 56-page guide mentions some very recent findings. Apparently unknown to the
list is a photo of a cast of the 8th specimen of Archaeopteryx. It
comprises a seemingly complete skull (minus the very tip of the snout), one
scapula + coracoid (I guess) and 2 quite complete forelimbs. (The
preparation may be incomplete, though, the fossil might continue behind the
scapula...) The quality of the photo is bad and the scapula overlies the
temporal region, so I can't tell any surprises, but at last I can tell that it
was found near Daiting (a bit over 10 km southwest of Solnhofen) in a layer
overlying the Solnhofen-Eichstätt plated limestone, means, it is younger and
therefore suspected to be a new species. Nothing else is said
there.
Regarding names like Khaan mckennai,
Patagonykus puertai etc. -- IMHO these should end in e rather than i,
because Latin grammar doesn't care about sex or gender, but the declination a
word belongs to. What ends in -a in the nominative gets -ae in the genitive. -ai
here is Old Latin (~Punic Wars and before), rather than Classic Latin. AFAIK the
ICZN recommends to emend such cases, just like all those superfluous -ii endings
(Hypsilophodon foxii).
Composite names like Velociraptor have
sparked controversy. IMHO one reason for this is that native speakers of English
aren't used much to composite nouns (while generic names are required to be one
word), whereas Ancient Greek and not-quite-classical Latin (comedies of
Plautus) compose words all the time, like German. I'm a native speaker of the
latter, so maybe I can explain a bit:
Pyroraptor is, literally, just
"firerobber" (/-snatcher/-...). There is simply no information whether it robs
fire, or lives/lies in/near fire, or is just red in color (or has a flame
pattern on the integument...). Velociraptor is completely correctly
"fast robber/snatcher/plunderer...", and likewise there's nothing to say against
Micro- and Megaraptor, or even Bambiraptor.
One should maybe think that mammals can't store fat
in their tails, but nevertheless there is a breed of sheep from IIRC Iran that
does exactly that.
AFAIK JP3 will start in German(y at least) on
August 3... I'll keep silent so long :-)
HP John V. Jackson was so kind as to send
me
M. E. Howgate: The teeth of Archaeopteryx
and a reinterpretation of the Eichstätt specimen, Zoological Journal of the
Linnean Society 82: 159 -- 175 (1984)
I must say the case for separating the Eichstätt
specimen as A. recurva is quite convincing.
-- AFAIK a rebuttal of this is published --
where?
-- The teeth of the 7th specimen, called A.
bavarica, look the same. Any chance A. bavarica is a junior
synonym of A. recurva?
I must get all those new books...
:-9
|