Re: segnosaurs

["Tim Williams" <T.Williams@cclru.randwick.unsw.edu.au>]

>  This is an elaboration of a hypothesis put forward around 1972 by
> Rozhdestvensky, before segnosaurs were recognized as a distinct
> dinosaur group, to account for the large-clawed, large-forelimbed
> therizinosaurids and deinocheirids being discovered in eastern Asia:
> The large claws were for holding the creatures upside-down, hanging
> sloth-like from trees. Most paleontologists have ignored
> Rozhdestvensky's paper, or have cited it as some kind of fringe
> paleontology.

I'm not surprised - the idea still sounds a bit loopy.  I didn't 
think there were too many trees in the Gobi Desert, even back in the 
Cretaceous.  And any tree capable of supporting a fully-grown 
_Deinocheirus_ or _Therizinosaurus_ must have been HUGE!!  But maybe 
Nessov is onto something when he suggests that the earlier 
segnosaurians were insectivores.  (Didn't someone else once suggest 
that _Therizinosaurus_ used its huge arms and claws for ripping open 
giant termite nests?).  I'd love to see Nessov's work.

Has anyone found a skull for _Therizinosaurus_ (or for _Alxasaurus_) 
yet?

What about the phylogeny of the Segnosauria?  Have the segnosaurians, 
like the tyrannosaurians, now been classified in the Coelurosauria?

Tim Williams