Re: Poll reply etc etc

["Nicholas Gardner" <n_gardner637@hotmail.com>]

> As my machinations to get someone to copy this to the dml have so far 
> proved
> fruitless, I am sending it directly to the most important people in the
> dinosaur world ;-)  :

You forgot Tom Holtz, Mike Keesey, Greg Paul, Pete Buchholz, George 
Olshevesky,etc. but included me!  I feel very hono(u)red.


> ?of which the 12th is:
> Xu and Wang, Troodontid-like pes in the dromaeosaurid _Sinornithosaurus_
> (egg papers too), can be accessed from the bottom of the webpage:
> http://ysgeo.yonsei.ac.kr/ieg_news/iegnews16-1.htm

I can't seem to find it.

> Sapeornis is on the Naturwissenschaften site:
>
> http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00114/contents/01/00276/paper/
> s00114-001-0276-9ch000.html

So is a paper on cranial pneumaticity in birds and erthryosuchians.

"As we are in the ?Pick Your Own? season for definitions of enants, I?ve 
looked over the above and a few others and still conclude the absence of 
ossified uncinate processes as the main distinguishing feature for 
enant-hood (Protopteryx doesn?t have them)"

JA Headden restored Iberomesornis with them but it may or may not be an 
enantiornithine anyway.  Protopteryx probably is not an enantiornithine 
anyway; http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2000Dec/msg00350.html.  Also, you 
aren't looking for a definition of the enantiornithines.  You're trying to 
find a diagnosis for them.  Paul's discussion of the Ruben, et al. 1997 
"Lung structure and ventilation in theropod dinosaurs and early birds" 
indicates that uncinates are absent in certain ratites and screamers, and 
what that has to do with enantiornithines, I have no clue.  By the way, if 
you don't want to look that up on the DML, 
http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/misc/lungs.html

Does anyone know what happened to Jeff Poling?  He seems to have 
disappeared.


"The scapulo-coracoid joint is said to be flat in Protopteryx"

Is the joint flat in confuciusornithids as well?

"I therefore discard direction of concavity as a completely reliable enant 
feature. UPs and long 4th toes though bespeak drom ancestry, and are 
therefore enant contra-indicators."

Concavity could still be considered diagnostic within the ornithothoracine 
birds.

"At last I?ll be able to see Conf?s UPs!"

I wasn't aware that Confuciusornis preserved uncinate processes.

"Cheers, and don?t take a wooden nickel!"

I've never accepted counterfeit money anyway...


Nick Gardner




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