Drepanosaurs (was Re: Whatever prima)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

[I am replying to this on dinosaur-l as well as directly, in case anyone
else can recall other recent drepanosaur papers.]

At 10:46 AM 4/15/97 -0600, Jeffrey Martz wrote:
>
>> Nope.  Many of the critters that he's most excited about (aka,
>> Megalancosaurus and the other drepanosaurids) may not even be
>> archosauromorphs, much less true archosaurs.
>
>    Could someone give me references by Fedducia (or anyone else)
>on drepanosaurids?  Thanks!

Feduccia has never worked with non-avians professionally.  He has not done
any research on these critters.

In any case, the most easily accessible of the papers on these guys is:

Renesto, S.  1994.  Megalancosaurus, a possibly arboreal archosauromorph
(Reptilia) from the Upper Triassic of northern Italy.  Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology 14:38-52.

Look especially at the life restoration on Fig. 11, and then turn to the
reconstruction of Marasuchus (Figure 13) in the paper which follows (Sereno
& Arcucci).  Then keep on telling yourself "Feduccia thinks that
Megalancosaurus is a better bird ancestor than Marasuchus..."

There are other recent drepanosaurid papers (one fairly recently in the
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, if memory serves, but I don't
have that on hand).  Perhaps someone else on the net can post those.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661