RE: JVP 25(2): New Dinos, Birds, Discoveries

["John R. Hutchinson" <jrhutch@rvc.ac.uk>]

As Senter and I noted in a past JVP abstract (also noted by Rauhut 2003,
Tykoski et al. Syntarsus furcula JVP paper), and as a forthcoming JVP
redescription of Segisaurus, it has a real fused furcula just like other
basal theropods (Syntarsus+Coelophysis, etc).  The Segisaurus furcula is
preserved at the median; people have just looked at it cockeyed and without
adequate comparative material or search image. Reports of just a clavicle in
Coelophysis seem to be mistaken according to other reports/pics I've seen.
Presence of a true furcula is unambiguously ancestral for
Theropoda/Neotheropoda AFAIK.

--John R. Hutchinson 

 
> >  Yates, A. and C. C. Vasconcelos. 2005. Furcula-like 
> clavicles in the
> > prosauropod dinosaur *Massospondylus*. _JVP_ 25(2):466-468.

> > This suggests that saurischians may have possessed articulated
> > V-shaped clavicles ancestrally, and it may also afford that 
> reports of
> > *Segisaurus* and *Coelophysis* clavicles may not form fused 
> furculae, but 
> > only
> > articulate as V's given the lack of preservation at the median.
> 
> Good to know!

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