Re: ISLE OF WIGHT OVIRAPTOROSAUR

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

    I can certainly understand your irritation with reporters who can't 
seem to get their facts straight.  Especially about this egg-eating thing.  
That's one reason I prefer calling them caenagnathiforms (not a perfect 
name, but a lot better than oviraptorosaurs in my opinion).
    But I am not so concerned about this particular story, as I am the 
scientific conclusion that Thecocoelurus is probably not a primitive 
segnosaurian.  Your reasons for this seem to be based on the plesiomorphic 
lack of certain characters, but I see no reason that early segnosaurians 
might not have also possessed such plesiomorphies.  I think there is plenty 
of room for ambiguity on those grounds alone.
          -------  Ken
P.S.  And given my suspicions about "enigmosaur" holophyly, I wouldn't be 
terribly surprised if Thecocoelurus turns out to be neither an 
oviraptorosaur nor a segnosaurian (or even a stem group thereof).  If these 
ridges (along the ventral sulcus) did evolve independently in these two 
groups, they could have evolved in other coelurosaurs as well.
****************************************
Darren Naish wrote:
> On the Isle of Wight oviraptorosaur represented by BMNH R181, Ken
> Kinman wrote...
>
> >      I am not questioning it just because of its size.  I am mainly 
> questioning it because segnosaurians also have vertebrae with similar 
> characteristics (the form of the ventral sulcus is on the list of proposed 
> enigmosaur synapomorphies).  And as Stephan noted, there isn't much to work 
> with, so I think there is still plenty of room for ambiguity and doubt.
>
> With all due respect, you might like to actually get hold of and read the 
> paper. There happen to be reasons for our conclusion that it is probably 
> not a therizinosauroid/segnosaur.


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