Re: Willie Wonka and the New Papers

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Mortimer" <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 11:42 PM

> And at long last my e-mail service has included a way to make messages 
> plain text, thus I can return to the DML...

Sorry for the shock: it's plain text _without line breaks_, so some readers, 
and probably the archives, will get the "truncated" message instead. I 
hereby repost the whole thing.

Microsoft has been bashed a lot, but when Outlook Express says what you 
write is plain text, it is plain text!

> David Marjanovic wrote-
>
> > So *Megalosaurus* is not a spinosauroid at all... Yay Torvosauridae.
>
> Yet reading the paper results in seeing only one character suggested that 
> would exclude Megalosaurus from the Spinosauroidea- the third alveolus 
> isn't largest (the fourth is).  They further state that in spinosauroids 
> (Torvosaurus, Dubreuillosaurus, Eustreptospondylus, Magnosaurus, 
> spinosaurids), the dentary is laterally expanded to accomodate this 
> alveolus, whereas Megalosaurus shows a much more subtle expansion around 
> the third to sixth alveoli.
>
> This is fine, but the authors also note a character of Megalosaurus which 
> is only found in some spinosauroids- paradental groove open only 
> anteriorly.  This is shared with Dubreuillosaurus and "Walkersaurus", but 
> not with Magnosaurus or Torvosaurus among spinosauroids.
>
> I should try adding the holotype to a non-maniraptoriform supermatrix I've 
> been working on (including all codings from Smith et al., 2007; Tykoski, 
> 2005; Carrano and Sampson, 2007; Rauhut, 2003; Azuma and Currie, 2000; 
> Allain, 2002; Ezcurra and Novas, 2006; etc.).  Notably, Poekilopleuron 
> falls out basal to the rest of the megalosauroids, leaving open the 
> possibility Megalosaurus has a similar position and simply hadn't evolved 
> the expanded third alveolus and dentary yet.  It would still be a 
> spinosauroid though, using Holtz et al.'s (2004) stem-based definition. 
> Using Sereno's node-based (Torvosaurus+Spinosaurus) definition, even taxa 
> like eustreptospondylids and Poekilopleuron fall outside Spinosauroidea in 
> the supermatrix.
>
> Mickey Mortimer

Wow. Is that supermatrix your thesis?