Hone and Benton 2009, quick hit

[David Peters <davidpeters@att.net>]

Just wrote a long letter to Prof. Mike Benton and David Hone after  
reading Hone and Benton, 2009, their contribution to Zitteliana 28.

Had to defend Cosesaurus and kin once again.

In short, they wrote a paper against the placement of pterosaurs in  
the Prolacertiformes, a position I fostered in 2000 and defend to  
this day. And, incredibly, they pulled it off without mentioning or  
referencing Peters 2000 even once (ala Unwin 2004, Pterosaurs from  
Deep Time). They compounded their sin and created their straw dog  
when they reported that Bennett 1996 placed pterosaurs near or in  
Prolacertiformes, when he did neither. Then they scored 229 of 324  
characters with a question mark for both Langobardisaurus and  
Cosesaurus, two virtually complete and articulated pterosaur sister  
candidate fossils, which is intolerable, but perhaps permitted  
because... They were excused from actually examining the fossils by  
creating a supertree matrix and the rules say you just deal with the  
data points there. They self-confessed the only supertree they used  
that actually had pterosaurs in it was that of Bennett 1996. So you  
wonder how pterosaurs nested where they did...

To readers of the DML, this is old territory. Anyone interested in  
the gory details can write me.

re: Contrasting supertree and total-evidence methods: the origin of  
the pterosaurs, Zitteliana 28, pp. 35-60, 2009
By David W. E. Hone & Michael J. Benton

David Peters
davidpeters@att.net

PS. Still glad that Sobral and Langer 2008 were brave enough to test  
Langobardisaurus, Cosesaurus and kin and found them to nest with  
pterosaurs.