RE: Pterosaur origins

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Christopher Taylor wrote-

> Under the ICZN rules, Coeluroidea would have priority over
> Tyrannosauroidea if one chose to recognise a superfamily uniting
> _Tyrannosaurus_ and _Coelurus_, yes. Of course, no-one is under any
> obligation to do so - you could just as easily recognise two
> superfamilies Coeluroidea and Tyrannosauroidea that happen to be
> sister taxa (though in this case, Coeluroidea would currently be
> redundant with Coeluridae). Personally, I'd probably be cautious of
> sinking Tyrannosauroidea into Coeluroidea unless the support for
> uniting them was very strong.

Yet Tyrannosauroidea has a stem-based definition that would include Coelurus 
in Senter's topology, so you can't have Coeluroidea and Tyrannosauroidea as 
sister taxa.

It's the same situation as Sereno's Spinosauroidea and Oviraptoroidea vs. 
Megalosauroidea and Caenagnathoidea.

This seems to be a very good paper, btw.  It's basically the Theropod 
Working Group analysis with 22 added taxa and 129 added characters.  Looks 
to test many hypotheses such as Maryanska et al.'s (2002) and Mayr et al.'s 
(2005).

Another interesting part is finding Chirostenotes, Hagryphus and Elmisaurus 
as oviraptorids, while Caenagnathus is more basal.  Of course the 
undescribed Triebold taxon seems to falsify the hypothesis Chirostenotes and 
Caenagnathus aren't the same kind of animal.

Mickey Mortimer