Re: Mononykine or Parvicursorine?

["T. Mike Keesey" <tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu>]

On Tue, 24 Mar 1998 jrhutch@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:

> Hi--
>       Parvicursoridae was coined by Karhua and Rautian in their 1996
> paper on Parvicursor (sorry, no refs here; I'm currently at the MOR not
> UCMP). They erected it as a redundant, monospecific taxon ("family", if
> you must) for Parvicursor, and suggested that it was a new clade within
> Maniraptora. It explicitly did not include any other alvarezsaurids. I
> guess the name could be used later for a subclade of mononykine
> alvarezsaurids, but Mononykinae is an explicit, node-based taxon of
> (currently Laurasian + latest Cretaceous) alvarezsaurids; MRCA of
> Mononykus + Shuvuuia and all of its descendants. Parvicursorinae has never
> been used, to my knowledge. Parvicursor is unequivocally an alvarezsaurid,
> and is quite clearly a close relative of Mononykus, i.e. a mononykine.

Tell me if this is wrong: The existence of Parvicursoridae implies
Parvicursorinae. Thus, Parvicursorinae can be the only "subfamily" that
_Parvicursor_ belongs to. If one wants to include it in a "subfamily"
with _Mononykus_, that "subfamily" must be named Parvicursorinae, since it
has priority.

If Mononykinae has just been defined as a node-based taxon, mightn't
_Parvicursor_ fall outside of it? _Shuvuuia_ is supoosed to be quite
similar to _Mononykus_ and the two come from the exact same area. What
about:

Alvarezsauria
+-Alvarezsauridae
  |-_Alvarzsaurus_
  +-+-_Patagonykus_
    +-+-Parvicursorinae
      | +-_Parvicursor_
      +-Mononykinae
        |-_Mononykus_
        +-_Shuvuuia_

Actually, I think this one would work better:

Alvarezsauria (stem-based)
|-Alvarezsauridae (node-based)
| +-_Alvarezsaurus_
+-Parvicursoroidea (node- or stem- based?)
  |-_Patagonykus_
  +-Parvicursoridae (node- or stem- based?)
    |-_Mononykus_
    |-_Parvicursor_
    +-_Shuvuuia_

And use the subfamilies if and when the parvicursorid trichotomy gets
resolved.

--T. Mike Keesey
tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu
DINOSAUR WEB PAGES -- http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~tkeese1/dinosaur/index.htm