SVP PREVIEW, TOLKIEN-BASED GALLIFORM

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Last week (sorry for the delay), Matt Bonnan joked about 
the fact that no one had mentioned his SVP abstract on the 
DML. Tracy followed this with.....

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<sniff, sniff>, your not alone Matt. No one (not even Naish) 
mentioned my poster either :( Of course it's not dinosaurian 
(its on Tanystropheus) so I guess it's not the topic of the list.
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Don't know what you're talking about Tracy, Naish has not 
posted any comments at all on SVP 2002 to any email 
discussion group: I did however recently post a writeup of 
the recent SVPCA meeting.

Moving on.... 

I normally don't post new refs on Eocene birds (mostly 
because Gerald Mayr publishes so much it's futile to try and 
keep up:)) but the following is out...

Dyke, G. J. & Gulas, B. E. 2002. The fossil galliform bird 
_Paraortygoides_ from the Lower Eocene of the United 
Kingdom. _American Museum Novitates_ 3360, 1-14.

.... and will be of special interest to some because the new 
taxon named therein, _P. radagasti_, is yet another Tolkien-
based name to add to the list (Radagast the Brown is a 
wizard from Tolkien 1954). On the palaeornithological side 
of things, Dyke and Gulas agree with Mayr (2000) that 
_Paraortygoides_ is a basal galliform and that megapodes 
are more basal than phasianids + cracids. In reviewing other 
purported Eocene galliforms, Dyke and Gulas report that 
_Argillipes_ and _Percolinus_ lack all diagnostic galliform 
characters, and that more material of _Coturnipes_ 
(described by Olson 1999 as an apparent galliform-falconid 
mosaic) is needed.

-- 
Darren Naish
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth UK, PO1 3QL

email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
tel: 023 92846045