Re: Turtles are parareptiles, and Eunotosaurus is their sister

["Dora Smith" <villandra@austin.rr.com>]

Turtles aren't reptiles, now.   The rest of it got lost in the technical 
language.  I'm afraid that was Eunotosaurus is doesn't tell me much right 
off the bat.   It doesn't sound like the term for "basal reptile".

Pretty soon, there will be no reptiles left that are reptiles.

What's a crocodile; a paratherapod?

What about a snake?

LOL, in the bird cage behind me, the small therapods are staring at me. 
They probably think that crocodiles are synapsids, of course, like humans 
and puppies.

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
tiggernut24@yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 8:22 AM
Subject: Turtles are parareptiles, and Eunotosaurus is their sister


> http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/03/rsbl.2010.03
> 71.full
>
> Lyson, T.R., G.S. Bever, B.S. Bhullar, W.G. Joyce & J.A. Gauthier. In 
> press.
> Transitional fossils and the origin of turtles. Biol. Lett.   published
> online before print June 9, 2010, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2010.0371
>
> Abstract
>
> The origin of turtles is one of the most contentious issues in systematics
> with three currently viable hypotheses: turtles as the extant sister to 
> (i)
> the crocodile-bird clade, (ii) the lizard-tuatara clade, or (iii) Diapsida
> (a clade composed of (i) and (ii)). We reanalysed a recent dataset that
> allied turtles with the lizard-tuatara clade and found that the inclusion 
> of
> the stem turtle Proganochelys quenstedti and the 'parareptile' 
> Eunotosaurus
> africanus results in a single overriding morphological signal, with 
> turtles
> outside Diapsida. This result reflects the importance of transitional
> fossils when long branches separate crown clades, and highlights 
> unexplored
> issues such as the role of topological congruence when using fossils to
> calibrate molecular clocks.
>
> Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
> Office: Centreville 1216
> Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
> Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
> Fax: 301-314-9661
>
> Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
> Fax: 301-314-9843
>
> Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Department of Geology
> Building 237, Room 1117
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20742 USA