Re: Noasaurids (Re: Late Triassic Footprints with Reversed Hallux)

["T. Michael Keesey" <mightyodinn@yahoo.com>]

--- Mickey Mortimer <Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com> wrote:

> Michael Keesey wrote-
> 
> > I was just tying to think of groups with aberrant feet. Maybe it's a
> > misperception, but it seems to me that theropod pedes are pretty uniform 
> > except for noasaurids and certain coelurosaurs.
> 
> Just because noasaurids have antiarctometatarsalian

There has got to be a better word for that. What's the opposite of "arcto-"
("pinched")?

> metatarsi and hyperextendable second digits doesn't mean they have a greater
> chance of having a reflexed hallux.  The characters aren't correlated.

You're most probably right, but in my last feeble defense:
- Perhaps certain groups are inherently more plastic with regard to certain
characters.
- The only group known to have reversed halluces (_Avialae_) also appears to
have hyperextendable second pedal digits (at least primitively).


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=====> T. Michael Keesey <keesey@bigfoot.com>
=====> The Dinosauricon <http://dinosauricon.com>
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