Re: Just a little nitpicking/Omnivoropteryx

[npharris@umich.edu]

Quoting David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>:

> > Dinosauriorum
> 
> Maybe it's dinosaurium. Dinosauria is supposed to be an adjective, right?
> <headache...>

It is an adjective, but an adjective derived from a noun by suffixing -i-.  
Such adjectives are -o/a- stems, so *dinosauriorum* is the correct genitive 
plural neuter form.


> >     Asia > China > Inner Mongolia (Nei Mongol Autonomous Region)
> 
> Well... in Chinese it's Nei Menggu (Zizhiqu). Syllables can't end in l, and
> mong happens not to exist either.

Standard Mandarin has only one mid-height vowel, which surfaces, IIRC, as [o] 
after w, as [e] after palatal consonants (y, q, j, x), and otherwise as a schwa-
like vowel.  The latter two realizations are both transliterated <e> in pinyin.


Oh, yeah, dinosaurs...uh...if you're looking for a flying basal oviraptorosaur, 
take a look at _Omnivoropteryx_:  huge arms, puny legs, _Caudipteryx_-like 
skull with teeth only in the premax., caenagnath-like mandible, manus 
configuration like in _Caudipteryx_ only a lot longer.  Looks pretty promising 
to me.

Note that _Caudipteryx_ and _Omnivoropteryx_ share a similarly reduced manual 
digit III.  If this character is truly synapomorphic between these two, and 
assuming the digit was not reacquired in oviraptoroids, as seems unlikely, and 
assuming _omnivoropteryx_ really was a flying oviraptorosaur, it has the 
following interesting consequence:  either flight was lost independently 
several different times within Oviraptorosauria (_Caudipteryx_, oviraptoroids, 
perhaps also _Avimimus_ and _Protarchaeopteryx_), or Oviraptorosauria 
independently produced a flier in parallel with birds.

And you thought oviraptorosaurs couldn't get any weirder!

--Nick P.