RE: Brachytrachelopan mesai [was Short-necked dinosaur challenges accepted theory]

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Tim Williams (twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com) wrote:

<_Brachytrachelopan mesai_ is an extremely interesting lil' sauropod. It looks
rather like a stegosaur mimic - without the armor. I wonder what the head looks
like (alas, the specimen comes sans skull).>

  My initial comment on the animal is that it's not as "upsetting" of any
theory as it might be touted as in the press, but then that's what gets it in
_Nature_ and popularized.... *Isisaurus* also has a fairly short neck, and it's
likely most saltasaurids were short-necked, given their smaller size may have
prevented long-necks from being neccessary in any sense of forage, feeding
enveloped, etc. 

  The name is rather confusing in an etymological standpoint: the Mesa family's
short-necked sheep-shepherd. The trivial name honors Mesa and his family, but
the name is modified to be a masculine singular genitive, rather than a
collective genitive (no "orum").

<Interestingly, the cladogram shows _Amphicoelias_ as a basal diplodocoid -
more basal than _Suuwassea_, rebbachisaurids and dicraeosaurids (like
_Brachytrachelopan_).  This must be based on new and undescribed material of 
_Amphicoelias_.>

  Or a reinterpretation of the known material?

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


                
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