Re: New alvarezsaurid

["Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com>]

Matt Troutman wrote:

<Lacking many, many, many, many, many, many, avain characters 
excludes them from Aves.>

and Dinogeorge wrote:

<No--exclusion from Aves follows only when you can demonstrate that a 
species is not descended from the common ancestor of Aves. One can 
imagine an avian that has secondarily lost many, many, many, many, many 
avian characters but is still an avian by descent.>

And if one could prove that alvarezsaurids and oviraptorosaurs had a 
MRCA than with any other dinosaur, my point would be proven. Oviraptors 
don't have to be "birds" per se, to be "protobirds", or derived from the 
same stock, both of which diverged so long ago. This would, 
theoretically, have occured in the Middle Jurassic, with Archie's 
antecendants, and any form thereafter would be "birds". 
Maniraptoriformes, for example, as *Oviraptor*, would be derived from 
the primitive stock that produced Archie on a divergent course, Archie 
bangs his head against a tree, and WHAM has this sudden urge to give us 
all a headache and direct his distant cousins to confuse us mammals on 
avain lineage. Meanwhile, *Oviraptor*, *Shuvuuia*, and *Hesperornis* are 
"birds" and "protobirds".

Pseudavis, anyone?

I'm not discounting your points, Matt. They are very valid. And so are 
George's and BADD's. The characters divergent within Aves prove the 
variability of the whole dino/bird line (not the viability of my group) 
and as such would caution us that every line can mix and match a set of 
characters for any purpose that evil Archie had when he WHAMed! his 
head. This, I must say, has been a very lively conversation and debate 
for me, and has allowed me cultivate those little gray cells, and has 
given me several (okay, a lot!) of facts to mull over as I take another 
look as alvarezsaurids.

Jaime A. Headden
Qilongia

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