Re: AW: Heterodontosaurid with protofeathers

[Marco Auditore <maaudito@tin.it>]

At 00.41 19/03/2009, you wrote:
> New Scientist has my take on the story
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127005.100-were-all-dinosaurs-beasts-of-a-feather.html
>
> I talked with Alan Brush who says the "protofeathers" were hollow 
> unbranched structures, just as he and Rick Prum had predicted the 
> ancestral form would be. I'm no expert, but it's looking plausible 
> that some kind of filamentary fuzz might have been primitive within 
> archosaurs after the crocodiles split off. Or perhaps before; it 
> could be that the fuzz was easy to lose.

Other than the protofeathers, it's very important even the presence 
of an heterodontosaurid in the Early Cretaceous. I remember that even 
Echinodon, from the Cretaceous of England, was considered an 
heterodontosaurid (honestly I don't know it's actual phylogenetic 
position)... And this can shed new light in the systematic position 
of the just restudied Stenopelyx... and maybe in a more strict 
appartenance of the heterodontosaurid into the Marginocephalian clade 
(only Psittacosaurus is known to have a similar structure in the tail)...
Wow! (as usually sorry for my bad English language!)

Marco

MARCO AUDITORE
Via S.Giovanni Battista, 7/23
16154 GENOVA SESTRI P. - ITALY
Tel: +39-010-6044259
E-mail: maaudito@tin.it
Web-Page: http://www.studiotsunami.it/minmi/index.htm

Museo Paleontologico Cittadino, via Valentinis, 134, P.O.Box 358, 
34134 Monfalcone Italy
Museum Web-Page: http://www.museomonfalcone.it