RE: Nqwebasaurus, maybe NOT an African ornithomimosaur

[Mickey Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

I don't think Nqwebasaurus was unusual in forelimb length compared to other 
non-hypercarnivorous coelurosaurs.  Its humerofemoral ratio is 50%, comparable 
to Haplocheirus (49%), Caudipteryx (47-50%), Avimimus (51%), Mei (52%) and 
Mahakala (~45-50%).

Mickey Mortimer

----------------------------------------
> Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:26:56 +1000
> From: tijawi@gmail.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Nqwebasaurus, maybe NOT an African ornithomimosaur
>
> Mickey Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com> wrote:
>
> > Very cool to see this described in more depth.  Unfortunately, I'd 
> > recommend taking the phylogenetic position with a HUGE grain of salt.
> > Previous Choiniere analyses have been extremely uncoded, leaving huge 
> > swaths of data unknown when they could have been coded as
> > one state or another.  In addition, at least the Haplocheirus analysis 
> > wasn't optimized in TNT right, as Choiniere et al. reported far too few
> > trees which are longer and different than the 1,000,000+ most parsimonious 
> > trees their data actually generate.  While the Nqwebasaurus
> > matrix is not available yet, only 176 trees are reported, and only 84 when 
> > it's constrained to be an alvarezsaur.  This suggests they made
> > the same mistake while running TNT as last time.
>
>
> I'm going to stick my neck out here, and talk about the anatomy and
> behavior of _Nqwebasaurus_, rather than its name. ;-)
>
>
> Irrespective of whether _Nqwebasaurus_ is an ornithomimosaur or not,
> the material indicates that this coelurosaur was herbivorous. If
> so... what did it use its hands for? The forelimb is short by
> coelurosaurian standards (just over 40% the length of the hindlimb),
> so presumably not very useful for grasping or hooking branches, as
> inferred for (more derived) ornithomimosaurs.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim