RE: New paper on Caudipteryx & cursoriality in Nature

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Jeffrey Martz
> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 9:29 AM
> To: luisrey@ndirect.co.uk; tholtz@geol.umd.edu; dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: New paper on Caudipteryx & cursoriality in Nature
>
>
>
>     Did the authors include the oviraptosaur with the pygostyle?
>
The did not include _Nomingia_ in either the morphometric or center of mass
study (it is far too incomplete to allow the latter).

_Nomingia_ DOES have 13 preserved presacrals and a nearly complete pelvis &
sacrum so you could arguably get a reasonable trunk length.  This depends on
where the presacrals were in the column: there are prominent hypapophyses on
the third-fifth preserved ones, suggesting that this is the cervico-thoracic
transition.  However, the metatarsus is unknown, so you can't get a real
hindlimb length for this guy: if you scale to approximate the length, then
plotting it as it were measurements is inappropriate.

Hope this helps,

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796