New Protoavis Publication.

[Adam Yates <zooamy@zoo.latrobe.edu.au>]

Yes as you may have guessed from the subject heading, half a decade has 
rolled around and Sankar Chaterjee has published a bit more on Protoavis. 
The reprint of the paper "Chatterjee S., 1995, The Triassic bird 
Protoavis. Archaeopteryx 13, 15-31." was recently sent to our lab. In it 
are descriptions of the post cranial material, drawings of bones (as 
reconstructed), a cladogram and a new skeletal reconstruction. If 
anything the new drawings look even more birdlike than in his Phil. 
Trans. paper. Especially the pectoral girdle wich he investes with a 
very large deeply keeled sternum. The skeletal reconstruction still 
looks ill-proportioned to me, with a puny little pelvis and femur 
perched on top of lower leg elements that appear to belong to an animal 
twice the size. Sankar finds that his Protoavis is embedded within the 
Ornithothoraces (more derived than Iberomesornis and Sinornis). 
Apparently his phylogentic analysis is in press, to be published in 
Palaeontographica.
BTW I've never heard of the journal "Archaeopteryx" before, does it deal 
with Palaeornithology alone?

 Adam Yates