RE: Hypotarsus

[John Hutchinson <jrhutch@rvc.ac.uk>]

Hi, I don't know of any such analysis for extinct dinos but Frank Fuss did
some nice work on knee joint ligaments (cruciates etc)-- not sure what is
meant by hypotarsus as that's at the ankle and there are no cruciates per se
there (that I know of in birds etc anyway; if there are, no one has really
detailed them much).  Cracraft's 1973ish pigeon functional morph mega-study
had some ligament details too, and then general books/chapters on avian
myology and arthrology/desmology have more, but you've probably seen those.

As for the ankle's hypotarsus, again not much functional analysis I can
recall for birds, although I think there was a bit in some diving bird
papers I read long ago. Other than Fuss's work I don't know of any grand (or
non-hyperspecialized) comparative/ecomorphological studies on these things,
but they may exist buried in the ornithology literature somewhere.

--John R. Hutchinson 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: evelyn sobielski [mailto:koreke77@yahoo.de] 
> Sent: 05 February 2007 16:32
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Hypotarsus
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> a question for the morphology people here: does anyone
> know a good reference about a functional analysis of
> the posterior cruciate ligament/phylogenetic analysis
> of the hypotarsus? I find too much specialized
> information on the latter and too much medical papers
> on the former, but I'm looking for something that will
> give a good overview on how morphological adaptations
> constrain the phylogenetic signal here (I assume the
> requirements on the ligament and thus the morphology
> of the hypotarsus to be different in perchers vs
> runners for example, but does that hold true for
> graviportal vs swift runners too?)
> 
> Also, am I correct in assuming that a hypotarsus has
> to date only been found to occur in Ornithothoraces,
> and that it is an autapomorphy in these?
> 
> TIA, 
> 
> Eike
> 
> 
>               
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