oviraptors are birds (update)

Dear All,           You may recall that I stuck out my neck back in February, and placed the oviraptorosaurian dinosaurs by the confuciusornithid birds. Although Maryanska et al.'s paper appeared shortly after that (and they had independently concluded oviraptorosaurs are birds more derived than Archaeopteryx), their conclusions were criticized for including too few taxa.           Recently, Toby White (who runs the 'Vertebrate Notes' site) added more taxa to their analysis, and he came up with results that are in agreement with my views and those of Maryanska et al., 2002. Although this will remain controversial for quite some time, at least one more voice has been added to this minority viewpoint. Toby posted his findings to the DML over the weekend, which you may read in the DML archives, if you wish, by clicking on the following link:             http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/ 2002Aug/msg00307.html

Unfortunately, it would appear to me that Mr. White didn't include enough taxa. Just adding Neornithes won't do the trick. And Mr. White has the advantage of knowing of several new taxa (i.e. *Jeholornis*, *Sinovenator*, etc.) that might influence the outcome. He didn't add several non-pygostylian birds that would have been helpful (i.e. *Yandangornis* and *Sapeornis*) and left the Segnosauria as a single OTU (which is not required to 'preserve phylogenetic signal'; see Norell et al (2001)). The Dromaeosauridae should have been split into specific OTUs and *Sinornithosaurus*, *Bambiraptor*, and *Microraptor* were not included. As for the paper itself, there are characters that need revised to be run again and many codings that need corrected.

I'd recommend using the following in a re-analysis:

Allosauroidea Tyrannosauridae *Eotyrannus lengi* *Scipionyx samniticus* *Ornitholestes hermani* *Sinosauropteryx prima* *Pelecanimimus polydon* Ornithomimidae *Bambiraptor feinbergorum* *Sinornithosaurus milleni* *Microraptor zhaoinus* *Rahonavis ostromi* *Archaeopteryx lithographica* *Deinonychus antirrhopus* *Velociraptor mongoliensis* *Sinovenator changiae* *Sinornithoides youngi* *Saurornithoides (mongoliensis+junior)* *Alvarezsaurus calvoi* *Patagonykus puertai* Mononykinae (*Shuvuuia* & *Mononykus*) *Beipiaosaurus inexpectus* *Alxasaurus elesitaiensis* *Neimongosaurus yangi* Therizinosauridae ('Therizinosaurinae' *Jeholornis prima* *Confuciusornis sanctus* *Sapeornis chaoyangensis* *Yandangornis longicaudus* *Protopteryx feningensis* *Longipteryx chaoyangensis* *Gobipteryx minuta* *Boluochia zhengi* *Iberomesornis romerali* *Sinornis santae* *Patagopteryx deferrariisi* Ornithurae *Caudipteryx zoui* *Avimimus portentous* *Chirostenotes pergracilis* *Elmisaurus rarus* *Nomingia gobiensis* *Protarchaeopteryx robusta* *Microvenator celer* 'Rinchenia' mongoliensis *Oviraptor philoceratops* *Conchoraptor gracilis* *Ingenia yanshini* *Citipati osmolskae* *Khaan mckennai*

That's about fifty OTUs...going against what will probably be a little less than 195 characters.

My 2 cents

Nick Gardner