Re: My Phylogeny: Growing Science (and growing e-mails)

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

HP Mickey Mortimer began:

> > > > > I have Archaeopteryx coded as lacking an ischial
> > > > > symphysis (Forster et al., 1998-
> > > >
> > > > True. This is also where I learned that troodontids lack it too.
> > >
> > > Hmm.  I'll have to change Archaeopteryx's coding based on Norell and
> > > Makovicky (1997), who say it has a symphysis.  According to them,
> > > Sinornithoides and Saurornithoides have ischial symphys[es]
> > > too, so change that coding.
> >
> > Strange, strange. I assume they don't say so just in a character matrix?
> > :-)
>
> Norell and Makovicky state it in their paper (it's the 1997 Velociraptor
> paper in AMN, so there is no matrix).  Randall Irmis recently told me
photos
> of the Solnhofen specimen show an ischial symphysis, so that's more
evidence
> it was present in Archaeopteryx.

Just re-reading the description of *Sinornithosaurus*. "*Sinornithosaurus*
is also more bird-like [Archie-like, that is] than other non-avian theropods
[...]: short ischium plate-like and less than half the length of the pubis,
indicating, as in *Velociraptor*^1, *Unenlagia*^8 and birds^3, the absence
of ischial symphysis;"

1 Norell, M. A. & Makovicky, P. J. A revised look at the osteology of
dromaeosaurs: evidence from new specimens of *Velociraptor*. SVP meeting
abstracts 1998, 66A [hasn't that become another AMN paper meanwhile?]
3 Forster, C. A., et al. The theropod ancestry of birds: new evidence from
the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Science 279, 1915 -- 1919 (1998)
8 Novas, F. E. & Puerta, P. F. New evidence concerning avian origins from
the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia. Nature 387, 390 -- 392 (1997)

So troodontids and *Archaeopteryx* have ischial symphyses, while
*Sinornithosaurus* and Dromaeosauridae don't? What's the condition in
*Bambiraptor* (the photo at www.bambiraptor.com doesn't show it :.-( )?