Re: [dinosaur] Earliest Tyrannida from Oligocene of France [...]

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

> And one more avian paper (taxon not named it seems....)
>
> Free pdf [and HTML]:
>
> SÃgolÃne Riamon, Nicolas Tourment & Antoine Louchart (2020)
> The earliest Tyrannida (Aves, Passeriformes), from the Oligocene of France.
> Scientific Reports 10, Article Â9776

Indeed not named, which is weird, because the specimen is a complete, almost 
wholly articulated skeleton. "Parts of the feathering are preserved as a thin 
layer of dark organic matter, showing among other features the shape of a 
typical frontal crest, in place and undisturbed."

This decision is nowhere explained that I could find from skimming and 
searching the paper (perhaps it's in the supplementary information). The 
authors do point out that the skeletal anatomy of extant tyrannidans is poorly 
known (they mention they couldn't examine several hundred relevant species, so 
evidently not much is published either), so maybe that's why they refrained 
from naming this one... but...

I hope this will serve as a reminder to neontologists and their funders that 
skeletons exist and are not negligible.