Re: My Phylogeny: Now Slowly Comes Science

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Farke" <andyfarke@hotmail.com>

> I'm not sure how significant this would actually be. . .the Bambiraptor
> specimen was a juvenile, and so leg proportions for the one known specimen
> (Bambi) may be different from those of an adult Bambiraptor (Bambi's Mom
or
> Dad). Also, there was a little bit of crushing in Bambi. I don't know of
any
> good growth series for dromaeosaurids (perhaps Velociraptor. . .but
nothing
> has been published). That would be the most help at this point!

Ah, thanks, I had really forgotten that Bambi is a juvenile... This makes it
certain that adults had relatively shorter legs, _perhaps_ more like in
*Sinornithosaurus*. And of course it makes my measurements quite worthless.
:-)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>

> The metatarsi in question are sort of "subarctometatarsalian": they are
not
> as fully pinched as caenagnathids, troodontids, ornithomimids,
_Garudimimus_
> (which resembles caenagnathids more than published drawings suggest), and
> tyrannosaurids (or as "hyperartcometatarsalian" as mononykines or
> _Avimimimus_).

So I'll make this an ordered multistate character with
-+- state 0 assigned to *Allosaurus* and *Compsognathus*, for instance, as
well as oviraptorids and, I fear, *Alvarezsaurus*,
-+- state 1 ("subarctomet") to *Archaeopteryx*, *Rahonavis*, the mentioned
"basal dromaeosaurs", *Caudipteryx* and (*Yandangornis* + Pygostylia) (where
statements like "mt III plantarly displaced" and figures showing mt III
pinched in the _middle_ in anterior view are common),
-+- state 2 ("normally" arctomet) to the 1996 content of Arctometatarsalia
plus Caenagnathidae (has the condition in *Harpymimus* now been described? I
assume it is unknown in *Pelicanimimus?), and
-+- state 3 ("hyperarctomet") given to Mononykinae and *Avimimus*.

Of course I invite everyone to rip this apart. =8-)