Tyrant stuff (no longer ranting) (was RE: Rant (was RE: Details on SVP 2002 Part 2))

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Dinogeorge@aol.com
>
> In a message dated 10/16/02 6:07:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> tholtz@geol.umd.edu writes:
>
> << Given that Currie, and me, and Carr, and Brochu, and
> Carpenter, and Paul
>  *ALL* agree based on direct observations of specimens that
> Tarbosaurus and
>  Tyrannosaurus are closer to each other than they are to other
> tyrannosaurid
>  taxa (except perhaps for Daspletosaurus, which may or may not be
> within the
>  node joining these two), doesn't that give you some clue that
> PERHAPS this
>  analysis was done correctly? >>
>
> Given that these analyses use a great deal of one another's character
> matrices, their mutual agreement is not surprising.

One could argue that potentially for me, Carr, Currie, and Brochu (of whom I
have the only published matrix, but that would be potentially accessible to
the other authors).  However, neither Ken Carpenter nor Greg Paul utilized
such matricies, worked from a different taxonomic philosophy, yet arrived at
the same conclusion.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796