RE: Benton et al.'s Supertree & The ecology of the Cloverly forma tion

["Williams, Tim" <TiJaWi@agron.iastate.edu>]

Mike Taylor wrote:

> For anyone who's not bothered to look at it yet, treat yourself:
> there's a PDF of the paper itself (five pages) which is an interesting
> read.

Other interesting findings:

_Lesothosaurus_, _Gongbusaurus_, and _Agilisaurus_ form a monophyletic
group, one node higher than _Pisanosaurus_ at the very base of the
Ornithischia. (I think the name Lesothosauridae is available for this
clade).

Hypsilophodontia is monophyletic - including _Hypsilophodon_, _Yandusaurus_,
_Othnielia_, _Thescelosaurus_ and all the guys traditionally included in the
Hypsilophodontidae/ia.

_Deinocheirus_ is nested *within* the Ornithomimosauria.

_Monoclonius_ and _Brachyceratops_ are both retained as valid genera (as
favored by Dodson, at least provisionally - and contra Sampson, whose
ontogenetic studies favored their identification as immature
centrosaurines).

>It would take a huge amount of counter-evidence to break up this part of 
>the tree, so the anti-dinosaur-bird people have clearly lost the debate.

That's the understatement of the year!  But I don't see any white flags
flapping in the breeze. 
 
:-)


In another post, Rutger Jansma wrote:

> In a previous post a mentioning was made about a revised Deinonychus 
> restoration in light of the post by HP Tim Williams and the riggidty of 
> it's hands. This has made me look into the animals possible behaviour
> again and perhaps some extra clues may lie within the ecology of the 
> area the holotype was found in [snip] Special interest goes to how 
> numerous were big rocks, mountains or that sort of structures? 

I'm not sure how the two are connected.  Are you proposing that
_Deinonychus_ needed big rocks or mountains in order to launch itself
against large prey?  _Deinonychus_'s hindlimb abilities would be sufficient
for it to leap onto the back of (say) an adult _Tenontosaurus_.




Tim