Re: Dinofest Report #2 (and final)

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

>Somebody (pardon me for losing the name) wrote:

>>In his Saturday talk on North American oviraptorosaurs, Hans-Dieter Sues said
>>his research implied that arctometatarsaly arose multiple times,
>>and that Arctometatarsalia is not a valid taxon.

Actually, Hans did not say this latter bit in his talk. He simply said that
arctometatarsaly evolved more than once.  This is something that everyone
agrees on at this point.

In fact, the one cladogram he did present was the one he presented some
years ago at SVP, which had a monophyletic Arctometatarsalia (tyrannosaurids
+ bullatosaurs), a dromaeosaurid-bird clade, and an oviraptorosaur
(including caenagnathids)-therizinosaur clade.  His more recent work with
Mackovicky suggests an alternative arrangement.

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