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Re: New refs... oh WOW!!!
Very funny. April fool's! Is that what this is?
--------
"Dino Guy" Ralph W. Miller III
Docent at the California Academy of Sciences
proud member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 11:10 AM
Subject: New refs... oh WOW!!!
> I've been to the library today... and I've used up over half of my new
> 1000-copy card!
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Michael D. Mortimer: The phylogeny of Neotetanurae (Theropoda,
Dinosauria),
> Annals of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Ohio at
> Springfield 2004, all 369 pages (1 April 2004)
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 1. Mickey, you modest &?=&&%§%*$§%$*§?*/§%!!! Why didn't you tell us!!! Am
I
> glad that the earth sciences library here carries such an obscure
journal!!!
> 2. I'll have to remember that journal... it seems to publish fast! :-)
> 3. Gorgeous! Absolutely gorgeous! Every character is illustrated, the
> distribution of every apomorphy is pictured...
> 4. Instead of giving you the lengthy abstract, I'll just give you a SHORT
> version of the cladogram (1 single MPT -- can I believe my eyes!; 650
> characters; 100 taxa) and let you enjoy it. Don't be too shocked! :-)
>
> +--Carnosauria
> `--Coelurosauria
> |--Compsognathidae
> `--+--Ornitholestidae
> `--Tyrannoraptora
> |--Tyrannosauroidea
> `--Maniraptoriformes
> |--Ornithomimosauria (large Deinocheiridae!)
> `--Maniraptora
> |--Scansoriopterygidae
> `--+--Archaeopterygiformes sensu novo
> | |--Archaeopterygidae (incl. even
> *Jixiangornis*!)
> | `--Dromaeosauroidea tax. nov.
> | |--Microraptoridae tax. nov. (several
unnamed
> specimens!)
> | `--+--*Sinornithosaurus*
> | `--+--*Bambiraptor*
> | `--Dromaeosauridae
> `--+--Troodontidae
> `--+--Aenigmodracones tax. nov.
> | |--Oviraptorosauria
> | `--Segnosauria
> `--+--Alvarezsauridae
> `--+--*Yandangornis*
> `--+--*Sapeornis*
> `--Pygostylia
>
> Inside Pygostylia, a strongly supported Enantiornithes is found, but it's
> not a very large clade.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> Wang Kafei, Kuang Pijiu, Huang Shouji, Zhuang Konglong, Guang Ouyuan &
> Chuang Meiyuan: The Middle Jurassic Fauna and Flora of Ningcheng, Inner
> Mongolia (People's Republic of China), Memoir 1 of Acta Geologica Sinica,
> all 852 pages (April 2004)
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> It's plain incredible what is coming out of that place. It's like all of
> Liaoning together, but Middle Jurassic. The photos are of stunning
quality,
> almost making one forget how hastily and superficially prepared most
> specimens are.
>
> The authors must have been working day and night... their English is a
rough
> ride, and there are so many typos that I haven't dared to give you the
names
> of the new species. Fortunately e-mail addresses are mentioned in the
book;
> I'll ask them directly.
>
> Described are (among others -- I haven't had the time to read most of the
> book!):
>
> - Lots of plants, including relatives of *Psilotum* and entire clades of
> angiosperm relatives
> - Loads of insects... take up 200 pages
> - Two species of the temnospondyl *Gobiops*
> - Frogs and salamanders with, to say it carefully, body outlines... even a
> few color spots
> - Tritylodontids and mammals with hair... including the oldest
> multituberculate
> - A stunning amount of lizards and sphenodonts with scales and color
> patterns
> - Weird and less weird turtles with scales
> - Champsosaurs with scales
> - Pterosaurs galore... several *Jeholopterus*, but also many others! 50
> pages!
> - Crocodiles, from big and semiaquatic to small and terrestrial and back
> - An entire *Klamelisaurus gobiensis*... with millions of scales
> - Complete ornithopods that will revolutionize ornithopod phylogeny
> - A feathered ornithomimosaur with a full complement of teeth and a huge
> sternum... the specimen is so incompletely prepared that I wonder about
wing
> feathers
> - A complete, feathered dromaeosaurine... with wings that are very broad
but
> too short to fly
> - Three microraptorids (Mickey's book is cited... there must be a HUGE
> conspiracy of preprint distributors out there!!!)
> - Several complete adult *Epidendrosaurus* -- it must have been quite a
good
> flier
> - Five archaeopterygids, one with a dentition seemingly adapted to
crushing
> small clams
> - A really small segnosaur with huge wings... seems to be volant
> - An even smaller flying oviraptorosaur that seems to have eaten ginkgo
> fruits
> - A complete, flying alvarezsaur!!! Recognizable as such by its huge thumb
> claws and various details of the vertebrae. Seems to have fed on termite
> nests in trees. Perhaps this explains why scansoriopterygids have no
> adaptation for opening bark?
> - A largely unprepared long-tailed bird.
>
> It's _dazzling_.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Stephan Pickering: Fossil population dynamics of *Hypsilophodon foxii*
> (Dinosauria), Fractal Journal of... no, Journal of Fractal Dinosaur... no,
> Special Papers of the Journal on Jewish Fractals in OBie's KING KONG 1(1),
> 20 -- 45 (1 April 2004)
>
> Stephan Pickering is a scholar within a few hundred kilometers of the
> University of California at Berkeley.
>
> Abstract:
> "I present a model of the population dynamics of the small herbivorous
> dinosaur *Hypsilophodon foxii* from the Early Cretaceous of southern
> England. I used the about 13 mostly partial skeletons to cogently guess
the
> size of a *H. foxii* flock and its reproductive rate. Because
*Calamosaurus
> foxi*, *Calamospondylus oweni*, *Aristosuchus pusillus*, and the unnamed
> basal coelurosaur (Naish 1996) are, as I demonstrate here (yes, _here_, in
> the abstract), undiagnostic crap, the presence of two species similar to
> *Sinosauropteryx prima* and *Compsognathus longipes* was assumed. I
believe
> that adults of these, as well as subadult *Eotyrannus lengi* and
*Neovenator
> salerii*, predated on *H. foxii*; the known specimens (one partial
skeleton
> each of *E. lengi* and *N. salerii*, plus four almost complete skeletons
> with feathers of *S. prima* and two largely complete skeletons of *C.
> longipes*) as well as extrapolations from *Haliaeetus leucocephalus* and
> *Neofelis nebulosa* were used as a template to unambiguously determine a
> paradigm of reproductive rates, attack success rates and habitat
preferences
> of these predators (viz. fast-slow dynamics, complexity theory).
Competition
> with *Valdosaurus canaliculatus* was modelled by the competition of
> *Paramecium* sp. and *Tetrahymena* sp. for *Chlorella* sp. in my aquarium.
I
> had to use commercially available THC as a template to hallucinate the
> patchiness of the palaeoenvironment with its lovely green patches of
woods,
> composed of two species of *Brachyphyllum*, three of *Czekanowksia*, one
of
> *Ginkgoites*, two of *Metasequoia*, and one of *Hirmeriella* (none of
which
> has so far been found in the fossil record), its lush green fern prairies
> (composed mostly of... *Gleichenites* or so... bah, what do I know about
> fern taxonomy, with local stands of up to four species of *Equisetites*,
> which are unknown as fossils). The wood patches had an average distance of
> 300 m; this finding has profound implications on the foraging behaviour of
> *H. foxii*, which preferred low-growing *Czekanowskia* leaves over ferns,
> but delighted in two species of *Equisetites*, which contained the silica
> necessary for the continuous sharpening of its beak."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Haven't read it yet. But the methods are presented in detail, and I cannot
> find a flaw in them. Quite impressive. The last 15 pages are references,
> BTW -- this is topped only by Glut's encyclopedia.