Re: New dinobird "Sinovenator"

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>       It seems to me to be too specialized  to be a truly primitive
> troodont,

Wait, wait. Nobody said it was the ancestral troodontid. It's not a
metataxon -- so what? In addition, everyone would expect much earlier
troodontids from phylogenetic bracketing, even without *Koparion*, the
slightly older teeth from Guimarota and the considerably older teeth from
Great Britain.

>     1  Troodontiformes Kinman, 2002?
>               1  Plesion Sinornihoides
>               2  Pl. Byronosaurus
>               3  Troodontidae
>     ?  Plesion Bagaraatan
>     2  Plesion Sinoventator

Requires lots of convergence between "Troodontiformes" and *Sinovenator*, or
a very long morphological branch for *Bagaraatan*. Evidence please :-)
Thanks for showing how you code polytomies (in another post).

>        Note that this is a simple addition of Plesion Sinovenator to my
> previous classificiation (along with the proposed elevation of troodonts
> from plesion status to full Ordinal status).

Troodontidae
|--*Sinovenator*
`--all other reasonably known ones

Note that this is an even simpler addition of *Sinovenator* and an unnamed
node to our previous cladograms (along with, er, nothing, and even without a
change in any coding numbers). =8-)

> I actually suspect that
> Sinovenator will actually be a member of Archaeopterygiformes, more
derived
> than Family Dromaeosauridae (sensu stricto).

Just to make sure -- "derived" doesn't mean "closer to Neornithes", it means
having a longer branch (having evolved further away from some common
ancestor).

> If more primitive
> troodontiforms are found, I would expect them to be propubic to mesopubic
> (not opisthopubic like Sinovenator).  We shall see.

At least a testable speculation =8-)