Re: (Paleognath monophyly)

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Well, that's sort of a topology. :-)  I don't think "unresolved
dichotomies"
> exist, by definition.

Indeed not.

> BTW, one major advantage cladistics has is that it forces people to try to
> find explicit relationships.

Indeed!!! No more rhizome taxa like Thecodontia, Eosuchia, Stegocephalia...

> Admittedly, I haven't read any of Feduccia's scientific work on
> neornithines.  I read his popular 1996 book several years back, and
> basically everything controversial about neornithines I can recall from it
> is no longer believed today (Presbyornis being a duck-flamingo link;
> shorebirds being the basal neornithine grade; parrots being derived from
> cuckoos).

He considered *Presbyornis* a duck-shorebird link convergent on flamingos.
Is not supported either. -- I can't judge Feduccia's work e. g. on passerine
phylogeny.

> He may do great morphological
> description or paleoecological interpretation for all I know.

The description of *Eoenantiornis*, of which he is a coauthor, is not
great... the photo (only one) is small and bad, and the reconstructions
cartoonish. But of course I don't know what role Feduccia has played in
compiling the paper.

> >That argument relies on the validity of the alleged cranial
synapomorphies,
> >which is still contested.
>
> Regardless, the disparity in pelvic and palatal morphology is irrelevent.

Again, what would not be irrelevant would be synapomorphies shared by the
pelves and/or palates of some paleognaths and some neognaths. Have such
characters been identified?