Re: Juravenator

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Jay wrote-

> Interesting how Gohlich & Chiappe recovered a monophyletic clade, which 
> includes Carnosauria (inc
> Allosauroidea) + Tyrannosauroidea in their supplementary information 
> cladogram.
> And in the Nature paper, they published a tree with Allosauroidea + 
> Tyrannosauroidea + remaining
> coelurosaurs in a trichotomy. Both cladograms are labled Strict consensus 
> trees.
>
> So I pose this: Are we seeing the (slow) return of tyrannosaurs to 
> Carnosauria???

No.  Among the more obvious reasons-
- Only two tyrannosauroids were included, both very derived (Gorgosaurus, 
Tyrannosaurus).  If more basal taxa were included (Guanlong, Dilong, 
Bagaraatan, Eotyrannus, etc.), they would probably be dragged into 
Coelurosauria.
- The analysis is basically the Theropod Working Group matrix with ~27 less 
taxa and ~30 less characters.  So its results are more poorly supported than 
most TWG runs (e.g. Makovicky et al., 2005; Kirkland et al., 2005).  The 
latter all find coelurosaurian tyrannosaurids.
- Only two carnosaurs were included (Sinraptor, Allosaurus), and no 
megalosauroids (which are important, as the outgroup of 
neotetanurines/avetheropods).  The other TWG matrices suffer from this same 
problem, which is why they're not the best analyses for this particular 
question.

Mickey Mortimer