Therizinosaurian Taxonomy

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

I have some questions about therizinosaurian taxonomy. (Hopefully you'll see
why before too teribly long....) Specifically, I am trying to find phylogenetic
definitions of the taxa. This is what I have found so far:

_Therizinosauria_ = Clade(_Alxasaurus_, _Enigmosaurus_, _Erlikosaurus_,
_Nanshiungosaurus_, _Therizinosaurus_ <- _Oviraptorosauria_, _Ornithomimidae_,
_Troodontidae_) Russell 1997

_Therizinosauridae_ = Clade(_Erlikosaurus_ <- _Ornithomimus_, _Oviraptor_,
_Neornithes_) Sereno 1999

_Therizinosauroidea_ = Clade(_Therizinosaurus_ <- _Ornithomimus_, _Oviraptor_,
_Velociraptor_, _Neornithes_) Xu, Zhang, Sereno, Zhao, Kuang, Han & Tan 2002

_Therizinosauridae_ = Clade(_Segnosaurus_ + _Erlikosaurus_ + _Nanshiungosaurus_
+ _Therizinosaurus_) Xu, Zhang, Sereno, Zhao, Kuang, Han & Tan 2002

Note that the first three are heterodefinitional synonyms, and the last is an
attempt to redefined a previously defined clade. Not pretty.

I had been using _Therizinosauroidea_, _Alxasauridae_, and _Therizinosauridae_
as a node-stem triplet. They've been used that way, but (and here is my
question) have they ever been explicitly defined that way?

Thanks in advance --

=====
=====> T. Michael Keesey <keesey@bigfoot.com>
=====> The Dinosauricon <http://dinosauricon.com>
=====> BloodySteak <http://bloodysteak.com>
=====> Instant Messenger <Ric Blayze>
=====

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