RE: Pterosaurs as basal archosauriforms

[Ross Mounce <rcpm20@bath.ac.uk>]

I'm very pleased to see this paper by Bennett (The phylogenetic position of the 
Pterosauria within the Archosauromorpha re-examined)

I think the methods used here are under utilized in morphology-based studies of 
phylogeny, as the author himself notes.

Understanding character congruence and partition congruence between characters 
is key to developing a more nuanced understanding of homology and homoplasy and 
has been the subject of much of my thesis work (I have recently submitted a 
manuscript analysing 62 different vertebrate datasets with such methods and 
more, similar to the talk I gave at last year's SVP meeting 
http://www.slideshare.net/rossmounce/phylogenetic-congruence-between-cranial-and-postcranial-characters-in-archosaur-systematics).

Aside from the studies Bennett mentions - Judd (1998) & Naylor and Adams 
(2001), there are certainly other studies out there that have made good use of 
congruence analyses such as the ILD test. I'd recommend:

Clarke, D. J., 2011. Testing the phylogenetic utility of morphological 
character systems, with a revision of creophilus leach (coleoptera: 
Staphylinidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 163 (3), 723-812.
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2011.00725.x

and

Benson, R. B. J., Mar. 2012. Interrelationships of basal synapsids: cranial and 
postcranial morphological partitions suggest different topologies. Journal of 
Systematic Palaeontology, 1-24.
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2011.631042

if you're interested to see other uses of such comparative cladistic analyses.

Best

Ross   


-- 
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Ross Mounce
PhD Student & Panton Fellow
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath
4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://about.me/rossmounce
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