Re: Dinosaur Genera List corrections #154

["Zoe Heraklides" <z_heraklides@hotmail.com>]

Dinogeorge@aol.com writes:

> Not quite. This might have worked if Archaeoraptor had been attached to any
> old dromaeosaurid tail, but it wasn't. You see, since they share the same
> type specimen,

But do Microraptor and Archaeoraptor share the _same_ type specimen?  One is 
named from the counterslab of the other.  Same individual, for sure.  But 
technically one could say that they have separate type specimens.

> Archaeoraptor is a senior objective synonym
> of Microraptor and is as well defined as Microraptor is.

But if the slab bearing the tail vertebrae is the type specimen for 
Microraptor, and (as someone else on this list said) if these tail vertebrae 
are undiagnostic, then the name Microraptor becomes a nomen dubium and, as 
such, should be restricted to the tail vertebrae.  The Microraptor type 
specimen has a tail preserved on its slab.  It isn't missing a tail, unlike 
your example of the forelimbs being found separate from the rest of the 
skeleton.


ZH

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