Re: Pterosaur celebration

[Silvio Renesto <silvio.renesto@uninsubria.it>]

At 06.22 16/09/2003 -0500, David Peters wrote:
> Why celebrate the 30th year of the discovery of Eudimorphodon?
>
> Is it because National Geographic anointed Eudimorphodon as the great
> grand-daddy of them all? Unwin points to Preondactylus and Kellner likes
> Batrachognathus in that role.
No, the reason is historical, not phylogenetic.
Eudimorphodon was collected and published before
other Triassic pterosaurs. Thus it is the  first Italian pterosaur .
The first paper on Eudimorphodon ranzii is not the  well known one by Wild 
1978 but a previous more obscure note by  Zambelli, who dedicated the 
species to a renowned professor of Zoology of Milano University, Silvio 
Ranzi. Being written in Italian language by a fish expert,  it is feasible 
that  it was skipped outside Italy.
Besides that, Eudimorphodon in Bergamo is a symbol, like a state fossil for 
the USA.
Anyway I hope Fabio Dalla Vecchia will help to clarify about the astounding 
similarity (are they cogeneric Fabio??) between Preondactyus 
and  Peteinosaurus.


> Will anyone be discussing archosaur versus prolacertiform origins? I
> haven't heard _any_ pros or cons since 2000.

No. Not in this workshop.
Fabio and myself did plan a long time project on this, based on morphology, 
but both of us have little, very little time to carry on with it, thus it 
is still at an embryonic stage.  Hopefully, when I will be completely 
settled where I am now, I will have more free time to  get into this.
Cheers,

                                                        Silvio Renesto


_

"there's treasure everywhere"
                        (from a strip of Calvin & Hobbes)

"The bad man is the job of the good man"
                                (Lao Tzu)


Prof. Silvio Renesto
Department of Structural and Functional Biology
Università degli Studi dell'Insubria
via Dunant 3
21100 Varese
Tel. +39-0332-421560

e-mail: silvio.renesto@uninsubria.it