Re: Caudipteryx suffered from osteoarthritis

[Matthew Martyniuk <martyniuk@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 6:43 AM, David Marjanovic
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
>>  Rothschild is a respected osteo-pathologist and expert on diseases.
>>  [...]

> But... this is about science. Claims -- all claims, any claims -- must come
> with an assessment of the evidence, or they're a waste of dead trees. It's
> the unpaid job of reviewers to catch cases where the authors forgot to do
> that, and it's the unpaid job of authors to avoid such cases in the first
> place.

But nomenclatural claims, like the one in the title (that Caudipteryx
is a "bird"), depend on subjective and arbitrary dividing lines.
Disagreements over phylogeny and ancestry aside, everyone agrees
Caudipteryx is a stem-avian, and whether or not it should be called a
"bird" is not a scientific question.

>
>
>>  The authors have a theory, which has been in print since at least
>>  2002 in Sylvia Czerkas' edited "journal" _Dinosaur Museum Journal_
>>  (vol. 1 and none more so far forthcoming), that "birdy dinosaurs"
>>  are, in fact, birds, but not dinosaurs, a controversial view leveled
>>  in Czerkas & Xu (2002) -- in said "journal;" a theory Xu Xing does
>>  not agree with -- where *Archaeovolans repatriatus* (formerly the
>>  avian half of the faked "Archaeoraptor" specimen, which had been also
>>  referred to *Yanornis yandica* and was actually commented upon by the
>>  author(s)) is assessed in regards to the avian dromaeosaurids,
>>  troodontids, and probably oviraptorosaurs.
>
>
> Just for the record, this is one sentence.
>
> Also, there is no *Yanornis yandica*. *yandica* is an alleged species of the
> alleged *Cathayornis*.

Also, IIRC the Czerkas hypothesis in that volume was not BAND, but a
weird BAD/MANIAC hybrid where Maniraptorans Are Not In Fact
Coelurosaurs, but are instead basal saurischians which predate the
theropod/sauropod split (based on the pelvic girdle of Scansoriopteryx
or something).

Matt