RE: Greg Paul is right (again); or "Archie's not a birdy"

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

  "It turns out"? My understanding, apart from the potential of certain fossils 
from the Jurassic of the Morrison and southern China, is that the Daohugou 
fauna continues to be considered Late Jurassic, and likely Kimmeridgian. If so, 
there is a gap here in understanding between us, and nothing firm has been 
published otherwise. Note that at least the implication of a sister-taxon 
relationship between oviraptorosaurs and therizinosauroids (not always firmly 
supported) with the association of *Eshanosaurus deguchiianus* implies the 
clade split in the Middle Jurassic _at least_. The presence of deinonychosaurs 
in the Late Jurassic (you know, *Archaeopteryx lithographica*) enforces the 
premise that this short-tailed ancestor issue would have been there, as the 
oviraptorosaurs would have to split off before the bird+deinonychosaur split. 
My previous note already implies that short tails appears to be the norm in 
oviraptorosaurs (regardless of their relationship with therizinosauroids, but 
with *Falcarius utahensis* it _would_ imply missing oviraptorosaurs with very 
high vertebral counts).

Cheers,

  Jaime A. Headden
  The Bite Stuff (site v2)
  http://qilong.wordpress.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)


----------------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:28:45 -0400
> From: GSP1954@aol.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Greg Paul is right (again); or "Archie's not a birdy"
>
>
> In a message dated 7/28/11 6:33:35 PM, archosauromorph2@hotmail.com writes:
>
> << And no abbreviated tails until the Cretaceous
> > unless new LJ fossils show otherwise.
>
>
> What about *Epidexipteryx*? >>
>
> It looks like Epi is turning out to be as earlier suspected E Cret.
> </HTML>