Re: Moroccan noasaurid?

[longrich@alumni.princeton.edu]

I'm still really skeptical of "Noasauridae". The thing is, the cervical 
neural arches assigned to Noasaurus have anterior prongs of the 
epipophyses, a character which is absolutely unique in theropoda except 
for abelisaurids like Carnotaurus; it isn't seen in Masiakasaurus. This 
feature seems to imply that Noasaurus is a small relative of 
Carnotaurus. That and Noasaurus also hails from Argentina so it may be 
simpler to assume it's related to Carnotaurus rather than something in 
Madagascar.
	And I mean, even for animals for which a very large percentage of 
the skeleton is known for more than a century- Coelurus, Compsognathus, 
Ornitholestes- we're still not sure what the heck these things are. 
Alvarezsaurids are known from really good material, virtually all of the 
skeleton and there's a lot of debate over what they relate to. Noasaurus 
is known from like a maxilla, a neural arch, some digital material, all 
of it mixed up in a bonebed... and there's no way to even be sure 
*where* that claw goes. Can anyone give a single good reason why it 
absolutely has to fit on the second digit of the foot... or even why it 
has to be a pedal claw rather than a manual claw? As far as I know, 
there's never been any evidence published to support this interpretation.
	Given that (a) the material is really lacking (about a half dozen 
bones to Noasaurus of probable yet unproven association and 
identification), (b) at least some of the morphology argues against a 
Noasaurus-Masiakasaurus clade exclusive of Carnotaurus (those weird 
epipophyses), and (c) theropod phylogeny in general is still in a state 
of flux in a lot of respects, well I think that it is a bit premature to 
talk about a "Noasauridae".
	re: Ornitholestes having a parietal crest, yeah as best I can tell 
Ornitholestes does have a sagittal crest on the parietals so this seems 
to be typical of many coelurosaurs.