Figure 1. Chilesaurus and kin, including Damonosaurus and basal phytodinosauria.
Figure 2. Look familiar? Here are the pelves of Jeholosaurus and Chilesaurus compared. As discussed earlier, this is how the ornithischian pelvis evolved from that of Eoraptor and basal saurorpodomorpha.
A new paper by Baron and Barrett 2017 confirms Chilesaurus (Fig. 1) as a basal member of the Ornithischia, not a bizarre theropod. As long time readers know, this was put online two years ago (other links below) in this blog.
Unfortunately, the authors don’t have an understanding of the interrelationships of phytodinosaurs, even though they report, “For example, Chilesauruspossesses features that appear ‘classically’ theropod-like, sauropodomorph-like and ornithischian-like…” Nor did they mention the sister taxon, Jeholosaurus (Fig. 2).
Remember,
discovery only happens once.
More on this topic later.
This note went out this morning:
Thank you, Matthew,
for the confirmation on Chilesaurus.
In this case, it would have been appropriate to include me as a co-author since I put this online two years ago.
https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/chilesaurus-new-dinosaur-not-so-enigmatic-after-all/
http://www.reptileevolution.com/reptile-tree.htm
http://www.reptileevolution.com/chilesaurus.htm
References
Baron MG, Barrett PM 2017. A dinosaur missing-link? Chilesaurus and the early evolution of ornithischian dinosaurs. Biol. Lett. 13: 20170220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0220 pdf online
Best regards,
