Re: A therizinosauroid dinosaur with integumentary structures fromChina

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

On Thu, 27 May 1999, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:

> The ilium is more similar to oviraptorosaurs in shape to oviraptorosaurs
> than derived therizinosauroids.  What exists of the skull shows that it is
> large for a therizinosauroid (for example, the dentary is 65% of the femur
> length).

There's something I don't understand. Given this phylogeny ...

--+--Compsognathidae (bristles)
  `--+--+--Therizinosauria (bristles)
     |  `--+--_Caudipteryx_ (feathers)
     |     `--Oviraptorosauria (integument unknown)
     `--+--_Protarchaeopteryx_ (feathers)
        |--Deinonychosauria (integument unknown)
        `--Avialae (feathers)

... true feathers would have evolved twice. Maybe I should wait until I
read the paper, but it seems that ... 

a) _Caudipteryx_ lies outside {Oviraptorosauria + Therizinosauria}
(closer to birds).
 or 
b) There is no {Oviraptorosauria + Therizinosauria}; therizinosaurs share
less recent common ancestry with birds than oviraptorosaurs do.
 or
c) Maybe the therizinosaur bristles are degenerate?

ARR! One of the biggest discoveries of the decade and I can't add it to my
site! BTW, I'm still looking for a recent version of taxa.txt or
genera.txt from my currently-dead website -- anything more recent than
April 23rd would be welcome.

--T. Mike Keesey                                    <tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu>
WORLDS                                  <http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~tkeese1>
THE DINOSAURICON                               <http://dinosaur.umbc.edu>