Re: AW: The cladogram from the supp. inf. of the *Anchiornis* paper

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

>  I'd advise anyone interested in the topology here to include [...]
>  another taxon of Confuciusornithidae that is not adult _C. sanctus_.

Assuming there is one. :-) *C. dui* seems real for the moment, but who 
knows. Maybe we'll run into surprises like the synonymy of *Torosaurus* 
with *Triceratops*...

> > Aves is defined right below as "the least inclusive clade
> > including *Archaeopteryx* and Neornithes".
>
>  Including Archie in *anything* is asking for trouble. Not before we
>  know waht's with Guimarota, and not before we know more about
>  theropod diversity on the W shore of the Turgai Sea from shortly
>  before Archie to 20 Ma later. (Even if no theropods are found -
>  *anything* about the ecosystem there will help).

Why is that trouble for nomenclature?

Where the trouble really lies is that I'm waiting for Archie to come out 
as, for example, a (very) basal troodontid, or maybe a slightly bizarre 
unenlagiine after all. Birds and oviraptorosaurs are remarkably close 
together again, too.

There are, anyway, very Archie-like teeth in Guimarota.

(:..The western shore of the Turgai Sea? Do we even know where that was???)

> > I still don't believe in *Wellnhoferia*. :-)
>
>  The current bones paper and a few allometry friends of it have
>  strangled it in its sleep. This is just its ghost walking.

=8-)

>  Ehem indeed. Did they code it as reversed in Archie? If so, oh boy...

Can't tell. The matrix is printed in =/&%&$&€&%&$ vector format, you 
know, the name of each taxon followed by a string of numbers and 
question marks that extends over 3 or 4 lines. Completely unreadable. 
I'd have to copy it into a PAUP* file by hand.

>  It's nice to include _Shenzhouraptor_, but you need more of this sort
>  of fossils.

I mean that the authors evidently think that 1) *Jeholornis* and 
*Shenzhouraptor* are synonyms, which appears highly likely to me, and 2) 
*Jeholornis* has priority, which is rather surprising as far as I can tell.

All these "long-tailed birds" (*Jixiangornis* and *Dalianraptor* 
included) need to be redescribed

>  2 Sapeornithidae too (they barely could have, but data availability
>  has much improved since they did the study).

Well, there's that second species of *Sapeornis*, but *Omnivoropteryx* 
still hasn't been described and may not even have been prepared yet. The 
original book chapter shows X-ray photos of the fossil in the rock. If 
it's synonymous with *Sapeornis*, we're not going to find out anytime soon.

(Omnivoropterygidae probably has priority over Sapeornithidae, however.)

>  So... where are the (southern) African unenlagiine almost-birds?

Where are the (southern) African anything? There aren't many Cretaceous 
sites in that region, and AFAIK no Jurassic ones. From the K, there's 
the sauropod *Algoasaurus*, the ?basal coelurosaur *Nqwebasaurus*, and a 
gondwanatherian mammal from the LK of Tanzania which promises dinosaurs 
that haven't been found yet.

>  What is known about unenlagiine habitat in South America? Was there
>  grassland already? How dense were the woods, if any, approximately,
>  in internal density and as proportion of the landscape?

All I can say is that it was not grassland. Grassland is an Oligocene 
invention, late Eocene at the most.