Re: Protoavis & Drepanosauridae (sensu Renesto, 1999)

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

  Just to assure the list I meant no disrespect to Chatterjee,
and my lack of understanding of the collection data regards to
*Protoavis* (which previous publications have sited as being
disparate and disarticulate, without quarrying info
recorded....)

George Olshevsky (Dinogeorge@aol.com) wrote:

<Tracy Ford and I talked at some length with Bryan Small, who
actually found the Protoavis fossils, back in the late 1980s or
early 1990s (whenever it was that we took a road trip through
Lubbock, Texas .... Bryan told us he found the jumbled material
in one or two rather small concretions in the quarry, and that
there was virtually no chance that the material belonged to more
than one kind of animal. That's right from the horse's mouth.>

  I believe you, George, or should I say, Bryan and you both
(including Tracy).

<This business about Protoavis being part megalancosaur, part
theropod, part prolacertiform, part lots of other stuff is just
nonsense.>

  Cool. I didn't call it a chimaera: I looked at it and found
ways to reinterpret features that are similar to the type of
*Megalancosaurus;* if the skull, etc. are megalancosaur, and the
specimens are more likely than not to be allocated as true type
individuals, then I have no problem with that. I see many
features, after going over fine detail photographs sent by
Renesto to me with a fine-tooth-comb, that can be interpreted
differently than Chatterjee's comments. That is, some, and I
have not made up my mind on this matter. I would dearly love to
see the specimen, seriously, and get the braincase paper, which
is the last detail aside from the Pal. Abt. A. paper that I need
for truly knowing proto....

<...one would expect to find things like two or more differently
shaped humeri,>

  Actually, the humeri of megalancosaurs are built so that the
ulna could not rotate and slides in a distinct cochlear channel,
with a caudal olecranal facet and the cranial diaphysis; the
capiti humeri also project medially with no "dorsal" projection
above the head, and a distinct offset deltopectoral crest at an
angle to the mediolateral plane of the proximal humerus (which
is untwisted). This is heretically like birds....

<Unless you are accusing Sankar of deliberate fraud -- and if
you're going to maintain that, you better have some >awfully
good< evidence, not just vague suppositions and innuendos -- his
>peer-reviewed< descriptive work should be accepted at face
value.>

  Sankar Chatterjee is one of the paleontologists whom I most
respect in this age. The last thing I would do is call him a
fraud. I had a conversation with him in Denver concerning the
new little Lameta domes which both Tracy and I poured over (and
I think you and have the paleo community that Friday afternoon)
and I can almost see all these careful "When dinosaurs diverged"
theories fall to pieces -- if these truly are pachy domes, which
they are incredibly reminiscent of.... Nick Longrich was there,
and together I can fairly well assure you that I consider Sanker
to be in his right mind. He's a busy little man, let me tell you....

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhr-gen-ti-na
  Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Pampas!!!!

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