Re: REALLY good introduction to cladistics!!

[AM Yates <Adam.Yates@bristol.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, chris brochu wrote:

> I saw the element in  specimens of several (well, 3) tyrannosaurid 
> taxa, and it was similar (and rather simple) in all  - so  we based 
> the third metacarpal in the Sue mount on those.  Very little is/will 
> be said about it in the Sue description.  We don't really KNOW that 
> Sue had this element, but it's  reasonable to hypothesize it.

How articulated was the skeleton of Sue? If we had a really good manus
with the bones all in place wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that
any bone not present really wasn't ossified in life, even this required
an extra evolutionary step (certainly not a big one in this case)?

cheers

Adam Yates