Re: Dromaeosauridae names, please!

[dbensen <dbensen@gotnet.net>]

>>Those pictures aren't inaccurate as much as they're
hypothetical. <<
Hypothetical, _there_'s the word I was looking for!  Seeing as how there are
exactly _four_ species in the whole of the deinonychosaurid clan that are based
upon any useful evidence at all (well, five if you count Utahraptor, which I
don't---the tip of the nose doesn't tell much).  The rest are mostly isolated
teeth and I faked 'em by painting them really small.

>>I remember drawing things like that ("here's Kakuru's head
based on Avimimus").  <<
I have actually done just that.  Avimimus looks just like Kakaru, except the
former is yellow and the latter is grey.

>>Of course you're a far better artist than I was/am (I
put you right up there with Greg Paul).  The only real problem with accuracy
is that Deinonychus and Achillobator need deeper skulls. <<
Cool.  I don't have _any_ pictures of Achillobator, only a passing description
that it "has a profile similar to Allosaurus".  As for Deinonychus, the texts
are really split as to what it looks like.  There is a puffin-like (everybody
except Gregory Paul) reconstruction and a robust velociraptor reconstruction
(Paul and nobody else).  Who should I trust?

>I'd say the only
dromaeosaurids worth illustrating are Deinonychus, Velociraptor,
Sinornithosaurus, Bambiraptor and perhaps Achillobator.  <<
No wait, Dromaeosaurus is very nice, too, even if I have to make up its body.
And what about Bambiraptor _is_ that one a deinonychosaurid at all?  The
Dinosauricon places it in Avialae.  Personally, I would have placed
Sinornithosaurus, Bambiraptor, and Rahonavis all together as part of
Deinonychosauria, but they might all be small convergently.

>> By the way, "Laelaps"
explanatus is velociraptorine, so it should really be Saurornitholestes?
explanatus instead of Dromaeosaurus explanatus.  And Dromaeosaurus gracilis
is better represented as Deinonychus? gracilis. <<
All of those Dromaeosaur species were nomen dubium, so it can be assured that
whever they are _now_, the _won't_ be there next week.  In fact, a good reason
for them all being included in the same species is because if they were not, I
would not have been able to put them all in a pack like that.

>> I just love your
reconstructions of "Koreanosaurus", based on a femur that's never been
illustrated, and of Euronychodon asiaticus, based on a tooth that is in all
probability something more similar to troodontids or ornithomimosaurs.<<
Yes, my phsychic powers allow me to see many things.  Koreanosaurus and
Euronychodon asiaticus looked just like little velociraptors with blunt noses.

>>
Also, I forgot Unenlagia in my list (I didn't have the second Velociraptor
AMN paper in May when I wrote it).<<
Unelagia is a deinonychosaurid?  Says who?

Thanks, HP Mickey Mortimer, for you're critique of my painting.   I'll use that
critisism when I do the "deinonychosaurids 2.0" (coming out sometime next year,
since I'm tired of those stupid dinosaurs by now.  There are about _three_ poses
a deinonychosaurian body can be in, and I'm sick of all of them!)

Dan