ENIGMOSAURIA

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Re: the status of Enigmosauria Naish et al. 2001 (not Naish 
& Martill 2001: though this is the correct citation for the 
entire book), Mike Keesey wrote...

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My own stance on this is that there are two types of 
taxonomic names: 1) Those that have been properly defined 
in peer-reviewed literature. 2) Those that have not.

_Theropoda_ and _Tyrannoraptora_ belong to (1). 
Enigmosauria and Dromavialae belong to (2). 
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The work in which Enigmosauria appears was in fact peer-
reviewed, so this is not quite correct. As some of you know 
however, its appearance in a single figure caption (and not 
in the text of Naish et al. 2001) was in error: initially it 
WAS discussed (and defined) in the text but, following the 
advice/criticism of a colleague, we decided to remove it. 
Given the proposed moratorium on new theropod clade 
names (Padian et al. 1999) this is ok, and Naish et al.'s use 
of Enigmosauria should be ignored. I did think though that 
it's about time that a more concise way of saying 'the 
therizinosauroid-oviraptorosaur clade' was published, given 
that support for monophyly of this clade is generally quite 
good.

-- 
Darren Naish
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth UK, PO1 3QL

email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
tel: 023 92846045