Re: REALLY good introduction to cladistics!!

[chris brochu <christopher-brochu@uiowa.edu>]

>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)?
>


I don't know - by the time we got it, it was already prepped.



chris

------------------------
Christopher A. Brochu
Assistant Professor
Department of Geoscience
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

christopher-brochu@uiowa.edu
319-353-1808 phone
319-335-1821 fax