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Re: WYLEYIA A DROMAEOSAUR? [and a word on Yaverlandia]
Mickey_Mortimer wrote:
I completely disagree. It is a very important specimen, as Wealden
coelurosaurs are extremely rare.
Too right. _Wyleyia_ may not be in the best state of preservation, but it's
clear it's either a small bird-like coelurosaur or a true avian (though
probably not a neornithine). Either way, it's an important fossil for the
Wealden.
On the topic of dinosaur-bird relationships, here's Phil Currie Down
Under...
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0009/28/national/national7.html
And on the topic of the Wealden, I noticed Sullivan's NMMNH paper on
pachycephalosaurs removed _Yaverlandia_ from the Pachycephalosauria. The
thick frontals are the only pachycephalosaur feature it has. No mention
though on what the skull fragment might be from. (Ankylosaur? Abelisaur?
I wonder. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the process of re-reading the
original desription of _Yaverlandia_.) With the Malagasy genus
_Majungatholus_ now known to be an abelisaur, and _Taveirosaurus_ of Europe
an undetermined ornithischian, pachycephalosaurs are now described for
certain only from the Late Cretaceous of North America and Asia
(Chatterjee's Late Triassic pachies from India notwithstanding).
But when somebody (Novas and Bandyopadhyay
in this case) actually bothered to look at the specimen, they found it was
diagnostic.
Better than that, _Laevisuchus_ appears to be a small-sized abelisaur. The
dinofauna preserved in central India's Lameta beds seems to have contained
at least three different abelisaurs (there's also _Indosuchus_ and
_Indosaurus_).
Tim
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