Re: BFC Epiphany

[Andreas Johansson <andreasj@gmail.com>]

On 9/26/07, Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Put this way, it's obvious that the problem is simply one of
> characterisation.

I don't think you can dismiss it like that. First, at least in that
post, Olshevsky's topology is decidely unusual (monophyletic
Phytodinosauria, Longisquama as a basal theropod). Second, look at his
summary of his hypothesis from a previous post in that thread:

"The BCF thesis is that ALL dinosaurs--not just certain groups of
theropods--were ultimately descended from small, arboreal archosaurs (which I
call dino-birds), of which one lineage (which I call the "central lineage")
represents an adaptive sequence that begins with a small, lizardlike,
probably arboreal "ancestral archosaur" (perhaps resembling _Mesenosaurus_)
and ends with any modern bird."

That's more than a characterization of topology: it's a scenario of
archosaur evolution. Whether we see Brachiosaurus brancai or Passer
domesticus as the end goal of archosaur evolution is a matter of
perspective: whether their last common ancestor was arboreal is not.

-- 
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?