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  • New study shreds the dinosaur family tree (and exposes double-standards in Phylogenetic Nomenclature)

    Posted on 27 March, 2017 17:23 by Jura 1 Comment
    Figurative illustration of the new phylogeny by Baron et al. 2017

    Most folks who visit my site by now have seen the big dinosaur news that has hit the interwebs. A new study from Matthew Baron, David Norman and Paul Barrett from University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum of London, has seriously challenged the classic interpretation of dinosaur phylogeny.

    Baron, M.G., Norman, D.B., Barrett, P.M. 2017. A New Hypothesis of Dinosaur Relationships and Early Dinosaur Evolution. Nature. 543:501–512.

    Classical dinosaur phylogenetics

    Although originally thought of as two unrelated branches of Reptilia that grew to immense size during the Mesozoic (e.g., Charig et al. 1965), for the last 43 years the group, Dinosauria, has been considered monophyletic (i.e., sharing a single origin) with the subgroups, Saurischia & Ornithischia, forming the first major branches within the group (Bakker et al. 1974). Saurischians, or “reptile hips” were aligned together by their similar hip shapes, skull characters (e.g., open antorbital fenestrae), and inferred soft tissues (e.g., air sacs). Ornithischians, or “bird hips” shared a hip structure that was superficially similar to that of birds, with a pubis that pointed caudally rather than rostrally, along with a variety of unique skull characters such as a neomorphic bone known as the predentary.

    Study after study showed that this relationship was sound, and so it stayed that way. The problem with getting the same answer over and over again is that one eventually stops questioning it. Consistent results become  common knowledge, and may even graduate to dogma. That’s not so bad if that common knowledge is true, but all too often many of these “obvious” cases wind up being just so stories upon closer inspection.

    Continue reading → Post ID 1652


    This entry was posted in Crurotarsi Dinosaurs Extinct Reptiles Uncategorized and tagged Baron Barrett cladistics Crurotarsi dinosaurs Norman ornithischia phylogenetic nomenclature phylogenetic taxonomy phylogeny Saurischia Sauropoda systematics Theropoda

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