Re: Prosauropods

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Mickey Mortimer (Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com) wrote:

<No one thinks prosauropods are polyphyletic anymore, there have certainly
been no phylogenetic analyses that support it.  Sereno (1999) and Galton
(2001) find Prosauropoda to be monophyletic, while Langer (2001) and Yates
(2001) find it to be paraphyletic to sauropods.>

  Funny, Yates (2001) as i recall found prosauropods in and of themselves
to be paraphyletic, and several other concepts of prosauropod monophyly
questioned in in the last five years. That *Thecodontosaurus* is not a
prosauropod (Prosauropoda being a paraphyletic assemblage within which
only Plateosauria [Plateosauridae <- Sauropoda] seems to be monophyletic)
with small groups of other "prosauropods" forming successive outgroups ...

--+--Saturnalia
  `--+--Thecodontosaurus
     `--+--Anchisaurus
        `--+--Plateosauria
           `--+--Melanorosauridae (limited)
              |--Blikanasaurus
              `--Sauropoda

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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