Re: New Ref

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

     As I stated back in February, I no longer have much confidence that 
either "enigmosauria" or "Alvarezsauria" (incl. mononykiforms) is 
paraphyletic (much less holophyletic).  I would give it a 30% chance that 
one is paraphyletic and the other polyphyletic, and a 50% chance that *both* 
of them are polyphyletic.  I will still give it a 19% chance that both are 
paraphyletic, but only a 1% chance that both are holophyletic.
     In other words, I would say there is about an 80% chance that at least 
one of the two is polyphyletic *as they are presently constituted* (I'm not 
talking about cladistic definitions that make them automatically 
holophyletic by default).
     I don't know if Mickey Mortimer can calculate the percentage of his 
trees that would have these various possibilities.  In any case, it would 
not surprise me if he comes up with trees (that are within a few steps of 
the most parsimonious) which show polyphyly of one or both of these 
groupings.  As I said earlier, only time will tell.   At that time I will 
reevaluate my position depending on the results of his analysis.  Just don't 
be too surprised if one or both go the way of "Bullatosauria", 
"Arctometatarsalia", and probably "Ornithodira" as well.  So many 
convergences, and even more plesiomorphies, it is easy to confuse them as 
being synapomorphies.
              ----- Ken
P.S.  At the present time, I regard both "enigmosauria" and "Alvarezsauria" 
as polyphyletic.  As is shown in my post of February 12th on this list, I 
classify caenagnathiforms and mononykiforms as birds, and the segnosaurians 
and genus Alvarezsaurus are regarded as non-birds.  Whether I will consider 
putting either of the latter two groups back into Aves depends on the 
results of Mickey's analysis, as I have said all along.
*****************************************
Nicholas Gardner wrote:
> I'm curious on how you place the "enigmosaurs" and "alvarezsaurs", since 
> you think that they are paraphyletic.




_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.