Re: hadrosaurids/Coelophysis

["Nicholas J. Pharris" <pharrinj@PLU.edu>]

On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Graeme Worth wrote:

> Up until a couple of years ago at least, hadrosauridae was a single family.
> Recently I've seen a couple of phylogenies where Hadrosauridae and
> Lambeosauridae were used. What is the concensus (if any) on whether
> hadrosaurids and lambeosaurids are tribes or families, and on what basis?

The situation there was that there were claims made in the ?late 80s that 
the hadrosaurs and the lambeosaurs had evolved from two different 
iguanodont ancestors.  To my knowledge, most researchers do not now 
believe this.  They could still be split into two families to emphasize 
their distinctness, but this would leave several primitive hadrosaurs 
without a family.  It's more practical just to throw them all into one 
huge family.

I split advanced hadrosaurids into the following subfamilies:

Lambeosaurinae
Saurolophinae
Edmontosaurinae
Gryposaurinae

Nick Pharris
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447
(206)535-8204
PharriNJ@PLU.edu

"If you can't convince them, confuse them." -- Harry S Truman