Enigmosauria Published (basically)

["T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>]

I just received my copy of _Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight_ yesterday, and
took a break from viewing and discussing the day's tragedies to look it
over. I know others have already said so on this forum, but it is indeed a
*fantastic* volume.

I was looking over the theropod cladogram when a certain name in the
caption caught my eye: the oviraptorosaur-therizinosaur clade had been
labelled Enigmosauria. This is a name I first proposed in a personal
communication to Tom Holtz over five years ago (and may have used, in
quotes, on my site for a little while -- I forget). I was rather surprised
to see it in print.

The book does not use the name anywhere else, as far as I can see. In
fact, in the actual text, it uses the phrase "oviraptorosaur-therizinosaur
clade". So it is not defined or used in the actual text, merely indicated
in a caption. But this is, AFAIK, its first usage of any kind in the
literature.

The name Enigmosauria, although not bad etymologically (if I do say so
myself), is actually probably not a good idea, since it would have to be
anchored on _Enigmosaurus_, which is not the best-known therizinosaur. I
think it would be a better idea to use a name like "Enigmoraptora"
("enigmatic raiders") or something, which reflects both the inclusion of
_Oviraptor_ (and _Conchoraptor_) and the fact that the group is part of
_Maniraptora_. Furthermore, it is not based on any genus. (And neither is
Pete Buchholz's suggestion, "Aenigmosauria".) A stem-based definition,
say, Clade(_Oviraptor_ <-- _Passer_, _Ornithomimus_, _Troodon_), could
work, or possibly a node-based definition like Clade(_Oviraptor_ +
_Alxasaurus_), with the proviso that _Passer_ is excluded. (The former is
probably more useful, though.)

My $0.02--
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