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I actually can't recall
anyone else who's suggested abelisaurids are closest to
megalosaurids/torvosaurids, though relations to carcharodontosaurids and
spinosaurids have been suggested.
I thought Czerkas & Czerkas (big book,
1990?) had based their family tree of dinosaurs on something widely accepted...
never mind. For some time (later) megalosaurids were repeatedly regarded as
possible ceratosaurs, though.
> Based on probably totally different (and
probably much fewer) characters (and not actually a
> cladogram, as not run through a computer),
but strangely similar, isn't it? :-)
Correcting a few characters...
[...]
"15 *Archaeopteryx* has the famous constriction, but does someone know
about, say, *Sinornis*?"
Sinornis has very poorly preserved crania, but Cathayornis and the
Spanish nestling have constricted roots.
(When I wrote that I had forgotten your
Details on Boluochia which also has such teeth.)
"16 In *Yandangornis* the entire fused metatarsus is narrowed in the
middle
and more proximally. Therefore I gave it 1, even though mt III is
expanded
at its proximal end. Entire foot of Pygostylia coded after a very
good photo
*Confuciusornis* (I haven't had a good look at a real specimen
for months,
but that will come)."
I disagree. Yandangornis and Confuciusornis have broad proximal
mtIII's and their metatarsi are not especially narrow proximally, even if that
were the same character.
Not "especially" narrow, but in the latter
it looks a bit like in Deinonychus. The former is of course difficult
to argue, as it's completely fused...
Just seen a Dinornis metatarsus
(mt III quite narrow and plantarly displaced proximally), but of course that's
rather irrelevant for basal pygostylians.
And the result is.....
that I must add a *LOT*
more characters. Incredible polytomies, and Archaeopteryx far away from
everything -- not beautiful. Answers the question why there are only 200-
and 300-character matrices in recent published analyses. Thanks a lot!
:-)
How widespread are fused nasals outside
tyrannosauroids and oviraptorids? (Though this character would certainly add
noise only.)
Is it ACCTRAN, DELTRAN or nothing? Does
changing this setting change the outcome?
-+-Ornithomimosauria
`-+-Troodontidae
`-+-Microraptor
`-Rahonavis
Wow, strange. Didn't you get such an assemblage once too?
|-Oviraptoridae
`-+-Segnosauria
`-+-Alvarezsauridae
`-+-Avimimus
`-Pygostylia
The pulling effect of the "-" for the
pygostyle in Segnosauria? <fear>
Yandangornis [...] was deleted to minimize
MPT's
Does something happen when
Bagaraatan is deleted?
> > * CBL basically is the same as
FABL
[...]
Thanks too!
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