Unsubstantiated gossip from Pterosaur 2001

["Chris Bennett" <cbennett@bridgeport.edu>]

Dinolisters,

Silvio Renesto have provided a nice overview of the recent Pterosaur 2001
Symposium in Toulouse, France.  If I may, let me add two points that may be
of interest.  Note, however, that these comments are primarily based on
informal conversations with other attendees (names mostly withheld to
protect...).

Point 1:

There was unanimous agreement that the tracks at Crayssac described by Mazin
et al. are the tracks of pterosaurs.  Unanimous agreement that they record a
quadrupedal locomotion with a plantigrade pes.  I had suspected that Kevin
Padian would not accept them as pterosaurian, but he stated in his talk that
he accepts them as pterosaurian.  He does not accept other trackways
assigned to Pteraichnus as pterosaurian, but most people I talked to seemed
to think that the war is won even if Padian wishes to fight that battle.
Wow! pterosaur workers agreeing unanimously on something other than that
pterosaurs could fly and we think they are neat!

Point 2:

David Peters' paper on four prolacertiforms and the relationships of
pterosaurs has been talked up a lot on the Dinolist.  Everyone I talked to
about it at the symposium (other than David Peters) seems to think that
Peters' cladistic analysis has major problems.  Running that data matrix
through PAUP produces the tree(s) that Peters published, but those I talked
to noted major problems with the interpretation of the morphology of the
four prolacertiforms and/or major problems with the formulation of
characters and/or major problems with the coding of taxa for those
characters.  I can attest to noting quite a number of errors in the coding
of certain taxa.  Of course, such problems do not necessarily indicate that
the resultant cladogram is incorrect, but they certainly leave me
disatisfied.  I would caution Dinolisters to carefully read and consider
Peters' cladistic analysis before concluding that we now know that
pterosaurs are prolacertiforms.

Chris


S. Christopher Bennett, Ph.D.
Asst. Prof. of Basic Sciences
College of Chiropractic
University of Bridgeport
Bridgeport, CT  06601-2449