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Re: Just a little nitpicking/Omnivoropteryx
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.