The phylogeny in this paper is interesting, for a number of reasons. [...]
As for the phylogenetics, I'd like to note that (1) the resolution of the basal neornithischian-ornithopod transition is currently poor (a single character matrix often produces numerous conflicting topologies depending on the tree-search methods used) and most of the newly described "basal ornithopods" may well be (and are often inferred to be) non-ornithopod neornithischians, and that (2) the dataset of Dieudonnà et al. (2016), that was used in a modified version by the authors, has been also revised by others (notably Herne et al. 2019 and more recently Dieudonnà et al. 2020). The latter is cited by the authors but not used.
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And Iguanodontia needs to be defined with Iguanodon bernissartensis as an internal specifier instead of as "all ornithopods more closely related to Parasaurolophus walkeri than to Hypsilophodon foxii or Thescelosaurus neglectus" (Phylocode Article 11.10).
Danny Barta in his review of the MS: "Madzia et al. (2018) provide an updated list of clade names and definitions in their supplementary information. Please make sure that your usage of names and definitions conforms to the new names and rationales that they provide." (
https://peerj.com/articles/9832/reviews/#version-0-1-review-3)
The authors in their rebuttal letter: "Done, but as suggested by other reviewers, we have now removed the clades âThescelosauridaeâ and âThescelosaurinaeâ."
Anyway, these are just minor things that may be discussed in some future papers. The material is gorgeous - hope to see more papers assessing it!
Daniel
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