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An update (in Chinese):==
Oculudentavis controversy, possible retraction of Nature paper...
Authors of original Oculudentavis "tiniest dinosaur" paper may be considering a retraction. The bioRxv preprint paper has been submitted to Nature with the consent of the corresponding author of the original paper.
http://www.uua.cn/show-8-10299-1.html
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The China Science News was informed that the above 6 paleontologists recently obtained high-resolution CT scan data provided by Li Gang (one of the original authors), a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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After reanalyzing the scan data, it was found that various morphological evidences indicate that the phylogenetic position of Oculudentavis and dinosaurs/birds are highly contradictory, but closer to that of the lizards.
The CT scan data proved that Oculudentavis does not have a quadratojugal bone, which is exactly the characteristic of the lizard.
Weibo sources said that six doubters had contacted the corresponding author of the original paper for the first time, and the latter had considered retracting the manuscript with Nature Magazine. At the same time, several international research groups are currently submitting questions to the Oculudentavis papers to major journals and preprint platforms.
===On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 8:58 AM Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com> wrote:The same authors have now posted a more formal preprint (without peer review) article with their analysis in English:Zhiheng Li, Wei Wang, Han Hu, Min Wang, Hongyu Yi & Jing Lu (2020)
Is Oculudentavis a bird or even archosaur?
bioRxiv (preprint)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.16.993949
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.16.993949v1
Recent finding of a fossil, Oculudentavis khaungraae Xing et al. 2020, entombed in a Late Cretaceous amber was claimed to represent a humming bird-sized dinosaur. Regardless the intriguing evolutional hypotheses about the bauplan of Mesozoic dinosaurs (including birds) posited therein, this enigmatic animal, however, demonstrates various lizard-like morphologies, which challenge the fundamental morphological gap between Lepidosauria and Archosauria. Here we reanalyze the original computed tomography scan data of Oculudentavis. A suit of squamate synapomorphies, including pleurodont marginal teeth and an open lower temporal fenestra, overwhelmingly support its squamate affinity, and that the avian or dinosaurian assignment of Oculudentavis is conclusively rejected.On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 10:25 AM Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com> wrote:Ben CreislerWang Wei and others have posted an online article in Chinese to critique the identification of the fossil skull as that of Âa "bird." They join others (notably Andrea Cau) in pointing out the lizard-like features and problems with the methods and analysis used to conclude that the creature was a tiny avian dinosaur.ÂThis "article" has been posted as a news story and I'm not sure if IVPP will provide an official English translation in the near future. Google Translate does an OK job of translating the text, but some of the terminology gets slightly garbled. Note that the term "wulong" [black dragon] in Chinese can mean an "unexpected mistake." It is also the name for "oolong" tea, which is what Google Translate gives. The 'wu' character can mean a "crow" as well,Âso there may be a bit of a pun intended (wulong 'crow dragon') in the Chinese article title on the possible misidentification of the fossil as a bird.
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Wang Wei, Zhiheng Li,Hu Yan, Wang Min, Hongyu Yi & Lu Jing (2020)
The "smallest dinosaur in history" in amber may be the biggest mistake in history.
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Popular Science News (2020/03/13)
http://ivpp.cas.cn/kxcb/kpdt/202003/t20200313_5514594.html
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Online English news item translation summary (with a few mistranslations):
Here is the list of problems found by the authors:
Doubts 1. Can the shape of the head prove that it is a bird?
Doubt 2. Unreasonable Phylogenetic Analysis
Doubt 3. Birds without antorbital fenestrae?
Doubt 4. "Birds" with pleurodont teeth?
Doubt 5. Mysterious quadratojugal bone
Doubt 6. Scleral bones only found in lizards
Doubt 7. The bird with the most teeth in history?
Doubt 8. Body size
Doubt 9. No feathers?
Doubt 10. Strange wording and logic chains
******From the text:
We hope that the authors of the paper will respond publicly to these questions as soon as possible. At the same time, it is hoped that the authors of the paper will quickly release the raw data of CT scans, so that other scientists can verify the existing results based on the raw data.
However, in the absence of reliable evidence, the authors of the cover paper in "Nature" identified an amber skull with a large number of lizard identification characteristics as a dinosaur/bird very arbitrarily. The importance and scientific significance of the interpretation cannot be discussed.Â
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