Coelurosaurian Relationships

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

Hey,
The list has been very active the past few days on the subject of 
coelurosaurian relationships and the monophyly of the Enigmosauria.  I haven't 
seen any discussion of Norell, Clark, and Makovicky's analysis that was 
recently published in the Ostrom Symposium volume, though.  However, I was 
offlist for awhile so I may have missed the discussion.  

This is probably one of the most important papers to date regarding 
coelurosaurian relationships (at least one of the most important that I've 
read).  Hopefully all of you who have ordered the Ostrom Symposium book have 
received your copy, as this is a must-read.  

Basically, the authors find a monophyletic Coelurosauria with the tyrannosaurs 
as the closest outgroup.  The Ornithomimosauria is the sister group to the 
Maniraptora.  Furthermore, the Maniraptora contains an Alvarezsauridae 
subclade, which is a sister group to a bird-dromaeosaurid clade and a 
troodontid-segnosaur-oviraptosaur clade.  The study also supports a 
monophyletic grouping of segnosaurs and oviraptosaurs, although the clade 
wasn't given a name (the paper was originally written back in 1999 or so, 
right?).  Furthermore, Dromaeosauridae is reconstructed as a possibly 
paraphyletic taxon, although the authors acknowledge that missing data may skew 
a possible monophyly, and the Bullatosauria is not supported.  

With that being said, I am curious about list reactions to this analysis.  
Hopefully many of you have had a chance to read and digest this paper by now.

Steve  

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Steve Brusatte-DINO LAND PALEONTOLOGY
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