Re: My 1st Dinosaur classification

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Mike,
    Your cladogram is pretty close.  But Ceratosauridae should be shown 
paraphyletically giving rise to Abelisauridae (not as sister groups).  And 
Ornitholestidae paraphyletically gives rise to the Ornithimimidae-to-AVES 
clade.
    And thirdly, the line going down to theropods should hook up on a node 
between Massospondylidae and Plateosauridae.  I am testing the idea that 
Massospondylidae split off first, and then a sister group split between the 
theropod line and a plateosaurid-sauropod line.  Admittedly this is less 
tidy than George's phylogeny (which consolidates the fifth-toe reduction and 
loss into fewer lines), but evolution isn't always very tidy.  I need to 
delve into prosauropods a lot more when I have time (theropods have been 
getting more than their fair share of my time).
     I was going to put in a Plesion Thecodontosaurus, perhaps between 
Massospondylidae and Plateosauridae, but I want to get the main clades 
settled in my mind before inserting various plesions (plesia).  The fact 
that some dinosaur families are much bigger than small ones (like 
Herrerasauridae) is to be expected.  After all, it's not as bad as having 
one Order for the aardvark and another Order for thousands of rodents (which 
is accepted almost universally in spite of the large size differential).
               ----Gotta run,  Ken
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