Bird Origins: Dogmatism and Skepticism

[Peter Nyikos]

In https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/UY2Hcee5Ez8/m/fIIm-K3SAgAJ,on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

I am making unmarked snips to emphasize the Dogmatism theme in this first post.
That is why I put the url up there to Harshman's post, to which this is a direct reply.

> > On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:

> >> but even you must admit that the
> >> scientific consensus that birds are dinosaurs is and was correct.

> > It certainly was NOT when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor
> > of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."

> > But biologists are slaves of external funding, and the implicit message Henry's editorial
> > came out loud and clear. Any paper that dared to dispute the hypothesis that birds are dinosaurs
> > would be held to astronomically high standards by _Nature_,
> > while any paper that supported the hypothesis would be welcomed with open arms,
> > at least as far as being reviewed by people who firmly believed in the hypothesis.
> > These reviewers would naturally get a very good first impression of the submission.

> That, dare I say it, is paranoid.

Get real. What paleontologist, on seeing the Senior Editor who oversees
paleontology and taxonomy and systematics write an article whose
very title declares that "the debate is over,"
would dare to reopen the debate under Henry Gee's nose?

If anything, I was understating the case. What editor on the board of _Nature_
would send to a reviewer a manuscript which looks like it is going to
try and reopen the debate, without first showing it to the only senior editor
who oversees any of the above three areas? And if he did show it,
what do you suppose Henry Gee's reaction would be?


> > Fast forward to the present, and Harshman has always been long on rhetoric and
> > short on hard data and reasoning. Just yesterday his "evidence" for birds being
> > dinosaurs was a close paraphrase of Henry Gee's *ipse dixit*.

> I don't recall presenting any evidence. Your memory is exceeding
> convenient for you.

The scare quotes are there for a reason: the only thing in your comment
to which I was referring that could be construed as evidence was
the authority on whom you based your close paraphrase,
and who need not be named since he was the first one
who came out unequivocally on the finality of the evidence.


NEXT: the skepticism


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

I'm sure there will be plenty of dogmatism besides the bit that I quoted in my OP,
so the emphasis will be on skepticism in this post.

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:

> >> On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > It certainly was NOT [the consensus] when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor

> > of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."

> It should be unnecessary to say that Henry Gee is not my role model.

For "birds are dinosaurs" he seems to be, as you immediately suggest:

> But in that case he was right.

If so, it was by sheer accident, not by any highly biased "reasoning":

> > He did this on the basis of two new finds in China, one of which was *Sinosauropteryx*,
> > a fligtless coelurosaur covered with hairlike fibers on much of its body; and
> > *Caudipteryx*, a creature with true feathers who many to this day
> > [including quite a number who do believe birds to be dinosaurs]
> > believe to be a secondarily flightless bird.

> No, there are only a very few people who believe that.

That's neither here nor there. Very few people are sufficiently knowledgeable
about this area to render any kind of informed opinion. And I'd say the people who
do believe it are a hefty fraction:

Halszka Osmólska et al. (2004) ran a cladistic analysis that came to a different conclusion. They found that the most birdlike features of oviraptorids actually place the whole clade within Aves itself, meaning that Caudipteryx is both an oviraptorid and a bird. In their analysis, birds evolved from more primitive theropods, and one lineage of birds became flightless, re-evolved some primitive features, and gave rise to the oviraptorids. This analysis was persuasive enough to be included in paleontological textbooks like Benton's _Vertebrate Paleontology_ (2005).[12] The view that Caudipteryx was secondarily flightless is also preferred by Gregory S. Paul,[13] Lü et al.,[14] and Maryańska et al.[15]

Others, such as Stephen Czerkas and Larry Martin have concluded that Caudipteryx is not a theropod dinosaur at all.[16] They believe that Caudipteryx, like all maniraptorans, is a flightless bird, and that birds evolved from non-dinosaurian archosaurs.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudipteryx

Note the absence of Feduccia, who simply keeps saying that the evidence is not
conclusive enough to conclude that birds are dinosaurs, but who agrees largely with
the analyses in the first paragraph that I have quoted.

> > There is at least one fairly
> > thorough cladistic analysis that has it in a clade whose sister taxon is *Confuciusornis*,
> > with *Archaeopteryx* several clades removed.

> Could you cite that one?

I said "at least one," without bothering to check the Wikipedia entry.
And you can see that Maryanska was not alone about placing the
oviraptorids in a clade within birds. I'll have to check Benton's book
to see whether the exact placement is as described above.


> You aren't referring to Maryanska, are you?

Who do you claim to have refuted that particular analysis?
I remember how you once called Mickey Mortimer "a real paleontologist"
even though he is very upfront about being an "amateur paleontologist."
That was back in 2018, when you brought his name to my attention.
IIRC you mentioned him because of the analysis he did, and I saw that
it did come to a different conclusion.

> > In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
> > were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.

> That evidence was at least good enough for Feduccia to change his mind about whether
> birds were coelurosaurs. Of course he settled that by then going on to
> claim that coelurosaurs weren't dinosaurs.

Did he now? I don't recall anyone claiming he went that far before, not even you.
The biggest clade I recall you claiming before was Maniraptora,
a far cry from all of coelurosauria. Can you give me a direct quote
to support your "Of course..." comment?


I have already dealt in the OP with what you subsequently wrote.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 9/20/21 6:03 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> In https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/UY2Hcee5Ez8/m/fIIm-K3SAgAJ,on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> I am making unmarked snips to emphasize the Dogmatism theme in this first post.
> That is why I put the url up there to Harshman's post, to which this is a direct reply.
>
>>> On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>
>>>> but even you must admit that the
>>>> scientific consensus that birds are dinosaurs is and was correct.
>
>>> It certainly was NOT when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor
>>> of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."
>
>>> But biologists are slaves of external funding, and the implicit message Henry's editorial
>>> came out loud and clear. Any paper that dared to dispute the hypothesis that birds are dinosaurs
>>> would be held to astronomically high standards by _Nature_,
>>> while any paper that supported the hypothesis would be welcomed with open arms,
>>> at least as far as being reviewed by people who firmly believed in the hypothesis.
>>> These reviewers would naturally get a very good first impression of the submission.
>
>> That, dare I say it, is paranoid.
>
> Get real. What paleontologist, on seeing the Senior Editor who oversees
> paleontology and taxonomy and systematics write an article whose
> very title declares that "the debate is over,"
> would dare to reopen the debate under Henry Gee's nose?

You grossly overestimate Gee's power, even at Nature. And of course
there are plenty of journals over which he exerts no influence whatsoever.

> If anything, I was understating the case. What editor on the board of _Nature_
> would send to a reviewer a manuscript which looks like it is going to
> try and reopen the debate, without first showing it to the only senior editor
> who oversees any of the above three areas? And if he did show it,
> what do you suppose Henry Gee's reaction would be?

One would hope he would consider the paper on its actual merits. But I
don't know him.

>>> Fast forward to the present, and Harshman has always been long on rhetoric and
>>> short on hard data and reasoning. Just yesterday his "evidence" for birds being
>>> dinosaurs was a close paraphrase of Henry Gee's *ipse dixit*.
>
>> I don't recall presenting any evidence. Your memory is exceeding
>> convenient for you.
>
> The scare quotes are there for a reason: the only thing in your comment
> to which I was referring that could be construed as evidence was
> the authority on whom you based your close paraphrase,
> and who need not be named since he was the first one
> who came out unequivocally on the finality of the evidence.

I urge you to calm down lest you have some kind of attack. You probably
should name this authority, since I have no idea who you're talking about.

[John Harshman]

On 9/20/21 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> I'm sure there will be plenty of dogmatism besides the bit that I quoted in my OP,
> so the emphasis will be on skepticism in this post.
>
> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>> On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>>> It certainly was NOT [the consensus] when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor
>>> of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."
>
>> It should be unnecessary to say that Henry Gee is not my role model.
>
> For "birds are dinosaurs" he seems to be, as you immediately suggest:
>
>> But in that case he was right.
>
> If so, it was by sheer accident, not by any highly biased "reasoning":

I have no idea what led to his opinion, but saying he's right in this
case hardly makes him my role model. Calm down. Your rage is influencing
your judgment.

>>> He did this on the basis of two new finds in China, one of which was *Sinosauropteryx*,
>>> a fligtless coelurosaur covered with hairlike fibers on much of its body; and
>>> *Caudipteryx*, a creature with true feathers who many to this day
>>> [including quite a number who do believe birds to be dinosaurs]
>>> believe to be a secondarily flightless bird.
>
>> No, there are only a very few people who believe that.
>
> That's neither here nor there. Very few people are sufficiently knowledgeable
> about this area to render any kind of informed opinion. And I'd say the people who
> do believe it are a hefty fraction:

I say it only to contradict your claim. You don't seem to know much
about the subject or about who is qualified to have an opinion, so what
you would say is not necessarily based on more than your desires.

> Halszka Osmólska et al. (2004) ran a cladistic analysis that came to a different conclusion. They found that the most birdlike features of oviraptorids actually place the whole clade within Aves itself, meaning that Caudipteryx is both an oviraptorid and a bird. In their analysis, birds evolved from more primitive theropods, and one lineage of birds became flightless, re-evolved some primitive features, and gave rise to the oviraptorids. This analysis was persuasive enough to be included in paleontological textbooks like Benton's _Vertebrate Paleontology_ (2005).[12] The view that Caudipteryx was secondarily flightless is also preferred by Gregory S. Paul,[13] Lü et al.,[14] and Maryańska et al.[15]

Note that Paul doesn't contest the standard phylogeny. He just thinks
that flight evolved earlier on the tree than most would suppose.

> Others, such as Stephen Czerkas and Larry Martin have concluded that Caudipteryx is not a theropod dinosaur at all.[16] They believe that Caudipteryx, like all maniraptorans, is a flightless bird, and that birds evolved from non-dinosaurian archosaurs.[17]

True indeed. But these are fringe figures, every one.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudipteryx
>
> Note the absence of Feduccia, who simply keeps saying that the evidence is not
> conclusive enough to conclude that birds are dinosaurs, but who agrees largely with
> the analyses in the first paragraph that I have quoted.

>>> There is at least one fairly
>>> thorough cladistic analysis that has it in a clade whose sister taxon is *Confuciusornis*,
>>> with *Archaeopteryx* several clades removed.
>
>> Could you cite that one?
>
> I said "at least one," without bothering to check the Wikipedia entry.
> And you can see that Maryanska was not alone about placing the
> oviraptorids in a clade within birds. I'll have to check Benton's book
> to see whether the exact placement is as described above.

Again, I ask what you were referring to.

>> You aren't referring to Maryanska, are you?
>
> Who do you claim to have refuted that particular analysis?
> I remember how you once called Mickey Mortimer "a real paleontologist"
> even though he is very upfront about being an "amateur paleontologist."
> That was back in 2018, when you brought his name to my attention.
> IIRC you mentioned him because of the analysis he did, and I saw that
> it did come to a different conclusion.

Most published analyses of theropods show oviraptorosaurs far from
Confuciusornis and Aves. Here, for example, is one:

http://paleoitalia.org/media/u/archives/01_Cau_2018_BSPI_571.pdf

All you really need to do is sample papers on theropod phylogeny and see
how many agree with Maryanska and how many do not.

>>> In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
>>> were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.
>
>> That evidence was at least good enough for Feduccia to change his mind about whether
>> birds were coelurosaurs. Of course he settled that by then going on to
>> claim that coelurosaurs weren't dinosaurs.
>
> Did he now? I don't recall anyone claiming he went that far before, not even you.
> The biggest clade I recall you claiming before was Maniraptora,
> a far cry from all of coelurosauria. Can you give me a direct quote
> to support your "Of course..." comment?

Yes, I probably should have said "maniraptorans", as in MANIAC.

[Peter Nyikos]

I've got a lot of grading of quizzes to do, so I can only spare time for a side issue:

You are merely replacing one undocumented claim about Feduccia with a slightly earlier one
that you made this week or last week, with maniraptorans in place of coelurosaurs.

Then as now, your claim was unequivocal, and I suspected that you were editorializing
much more nuanced statements by Feduccia, which is all I recall seeing from him.

This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.

> This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
> So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.

We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
by looking at the article in question. Or you could check out a more
recent Auk article in which he shows to his satisfaction that
Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.

[Glenn]

Thanks.

"As Clark noted years ago, “similarity lies in the eyes of the beholder, and…the particular hypothesis being advocated strongly colors perceptions of morphological resemblance”.

https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/130/1/1/5148815

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 3:31:45 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/21/21 12:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > I've got a lot of grading of quizzes to do, so I can only spare time for a side issue:
> >
> > On Monday, September 20, 2021 at 10:10:29 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/20/21 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> >>>>> In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
> >>>>> were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.
> >>>
> >>>> That evidence was at least good enough for Feduccia to change his mind about whether
> >>>> birds were coelurosaurs. Of course he settled that by then going on to
> >>>> claim that coelurosaurs weren't dinosaurs.
> >>>
> >>> Did he now? I don't recall anyone claiming he went that far before, not even you.
> >>> The biggest clade I recall you claiming before was Maniraptora,
> >>> a far cry from all of coelurosauria. Can you give me a direct quote
> >>> to support your "Of course..." comment?
> >
> >> Yes, I probably should have said "maniraptorans", as in MANIAC.
> >
> > You are merely replacing one undocumented claim about Feduccia with a slightly earlier one
> > that you made this week or last week, with maniraptorans in place of coelurosaurs.
> >
> > Then as now, your claim was unequivocal, and I suspected that you were editorializing
> > much more nuanced statements by Feduccia, which is all I recall seeing from him.

Your "presumably discussing" in the next paragraph is centered on the following post of mine:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/UY2Hcee5Ez8/m/qHXXpRbgAgAJ
Re: A new shark-toothed theropod from Uzbekistan
Sep 15, 2021, 9:13:09 PM

> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.

Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
only a small subclade of Maniraptora.

> > This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
> > So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.

> We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
> by looking at the article in question.

I have no memory of that article at all, and have no idea where to look for it.
It is YOU, obviously, who needs to refresh your memory of the article about which
you "held court" in talk.origins to a rapt audience + one notorious species
immutabilist for 50 posts before I came on the scene.

Your recollection of those heady days now has had you narrowing a claim thus:

Coelurosaurs -----> Maniraptorans ------> Deionychids

> Or you could check out a more
> recent Auk article

... about which you don't even claim an inconsistency, like you originally
claimed Feduccia made about Maniraptora, which you ambitiously changed to coelurosaurs
before backpedaling to Maniraptora and now to deionychids.

>in which he shows to his satisfaction that
> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.

Sorry, I'm not going to pursue this red herring. I'm holding you to your latest allegation
(or some reasonable facsimile thereof) about that earlier Auk article.

You've made allegations about Feduccia of a magnitude that would make you highly indignant
if a similar allegation were made of you. And he isn't even here to defend himself -- and it
also gets your dander up when I say something the least bit negative about an
absent person whom you don't have a bad opinion of, yourself.


Try behaving like a responsible adult and QUOTING something that backs up something along
the lines of one of your claims about the earlier article. How long does it take to dig up the article,
copy and paste one passage out of it and then another, incompatible passage?

I don't think it would take much longer than it took me to dig up the the post that was
in the middle of our earlier discussion, figure out two of the three lines of documentation
that I posted up there, and to paste them in. And to save you time, I'm even telling you that the last
thirteen lines of text in it are all you need to look at.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[erik simpson]

Haven't we seen this movie before?

[Glenn]

Probably.

A 200 million year old chicken:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Protoavis&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5h-KphZTzAhVB6J4KHZC2D8oQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1440&bih=814&dpr=1

[Peter Nyikos]

Erik, I suppose the following one-liner of yours could come under the "Dogmatism" rubric. :)

> Haven't we seen this movie before?

Never. Nothing at all like it. Have you ever seen Harshman's main group about which Feduccia
was allegedly saying inconsistent things evolved like this in the space of ONE WEEK?

Dromaeosauridae ------> Coelurosauria -----> Maniraptora -----> Deinonychus

You really need to get skeptical about your memory, Erik.

To save readers trouble: Maniraptora is a subclade of Coelurosauria, while Dromaeosauridae is a subclade of Maniraptora, and Deinonychus is a genus in Dromaeosauridae. Apparently "deinonychids" is a synonym
for that one iconic genus, the sickle-clawed Deinonychus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptora

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus

And, to save y'all even more trouble, what Harshman wrote a week ago, on that
other thread, was:

"If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."

If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-(

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

That just goes to the OP in another thread. What does that have to do
with anything?

>> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
>> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
>> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
>> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
>> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.
>
> Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
> modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
> now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
> only a small subclade of Maniraptora.

Yes, that was a mistake. But the point is that he claimed birds can't be
dinosaurs based on that a lack of relationship to Deinonychus and in the
same paper claimed that Deinonychus wasn't a dinosaur either, so even if
it's related to Archaeopteryx, birds still aren't dinosaurs. This is not
a mere self-contradiction.

>>> This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
>>> So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.
>
>> We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
>> by looking at the article in question.
>
> I have no memory of that article at all, and have no idea where to look for it.
> It is YOU, obviously, who needs to refresh your memory of the article about which
> you "held court" in talk.origins to a rapt audience + one notorious species
> immutabilist for 50 posts before I came on the scene.

Feduccia A. 2002. Birds are dinosaurs: Simple answer to a complex
problem. Auk 119:1187–1201. Try google.

> Your recollection of those heady days now has had you narrowing a claim thus:
>
> Coelurosaurs -----> Maniraptorans ------> Deionychids

I will admit that in that article Feduccia failed to make clear just
where on the theropod tree he wanted to detach a clade. Somewhere
including all feathered theropods, but the rest is unstated. He's not
into phylogenetic trees.

>> Or you could check out a more
>> recent Auk article
>
> ... about which you don't even claim an inconsistency, like you originally
> claimed Feduccia made about Maniraptora, which you ambitiously changed to coelurosaurs
> before backpedaling to Maniraptora and now to deionychids.

That's a consistent misspelling, so I should correct you: deinonychids.

> >in which he shows to his satisfaction that
>> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
>> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.
>
> Sorry, I'm not going to pursue this red herring. I'm holding you to your latest allegation
> (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) about that earlier Auk article.

Try it yourself. Read the article and get back to me. Feel free to read
the other article too.

> You've made allegations about Feduccia of a magnitude that would make you highly indignant
> if a similar allegation were made of you. And he isn't even here to defend himself -- and it
> also gets your dander up when I say something the least bit negative about an
> absent person whom you don't have a bad opinion of, yourself.

I would be indignant because I don't do that sort of thing, while
Feduccia did. And hey, you're the one who brought up Feduccia. I'm just
following you down your own rabbit hole.

[erik simpson]

I confessI haven't been following this exchange closely. I have a general interest in avian phylogeny,
althoug it isn't at the top of my list. But this isn't about avain phylogeny. What Feduccia thought about it,
what, a decade ago?, wasn't very relevant then and is much less so now. If that isn't the topic,
and you're more concerned with Harshman's account of Feduccia's thought, that has nothing to do
with avian phylogeny, and I have zero interest. THe "movie" I spoke of referred to
your presentation as Feducccia's bulldog. No interest there, either. I apologize if I distracted you
from your purpose. Carry on.

[Glenn]

https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/68/5/840/5315532?login=true

https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOOENIJ-11-27

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lt78DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=feduccia+avian+fossils&ots=UDFTWI7r8g&sig=3YSHoe721uinrS5mhoO48U4lOLQ#v=onepage&q=feduccia%20avian%20fossils&f=false

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 12:31:16 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/22/21 6:44 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 3:31:45 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/21/21 12:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> I've got a lot of grading of quizzes to do, so I can only spare time for a side issue:
> >>>
> >>> On Monday, September 20, 2021 at 10:10:29 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 9/20/21 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>>> In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
> >>>>>>> were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> That evidence was at least good enough for Feduccia to change his mind about whether
> >>>>>> birds were coelurosaurs. Of course he settled that by then going on to
> >>>>>> claim that coelurosaurs weren't dinosaurs.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Did he now? I don't recall anyone claiming he went that far before, not even you.
> >>>>> The biggest clade I recall you claiming before was Maniraptora,
> >>>>> a far cry from all of coelurosauria. Can you give me a direct quote
> >>>>> to support your "Of course..." comment?
> >>>
> >>>> Yes, I probably should have said "maniraptorans", as in MANIAC.
> >>>
> >>> You are merely replacing one undocumented claim about Feduccia with a slightly earlier one
> >>> that you made this week or last week, with maniraptorans in place of coelurosaurs.
> >>>
> >>> Then as now, your claim was unequivocal, and I suspected that you were editorializing
> >>> much more nuanced statements by Feduccia, which is all I recall seeing from him.
> >
> > Your "presumably discussing" in the next paragraph is centered on the following post of mine:

It looks like Giganews, or whatever, is letting you down, John, about the following url:

> > https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/UY2Hcee5Ez8/m/qHXXpRbgAgAJ
> > Re: A new shark-toothed theropod from Uzbekistan
> > Sep 15, 2021, 9:13:09 PM

> That just goes to the OP in another thread.

That OP was made well before Sep 15, 2021, 9:13:09 PM.

When I clicked the above url just now, it took me straight to the post I was telling you about.
Your last paragraph there stated:

"If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."

As I told Erik almost two hours before you did this post of yours,

"If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-( "

> What does that have to do with anything?

If you had read the attribution line of the OP of THIS thread, you would have seen an url of a post
of yours to which I was replying. Don't urls show up in blue in Giganews?

> >> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
> >> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
> >> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
> >> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
> >> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.
> >
> > Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
> > modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
> > now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
> > only a small subclade of Maniraptora.

Evidently that small subclade is the genus Deinonychus; is "deinonychids"
simply a synonym for that genus?

> Yes, that was a mistake. But the point is that he claimed birds can't be
> dinosaurs based on that a lack of relationship to Deinonychus and in the
> same paper claimed that Deinonychus wasn't a dinosaur either, so even if
> it's related to Archaeopteryx, birds still aren't dinosaurs. This is not
> a mere self-contradiction.

You are piling one thing on top of another here, yet you still haven't done
what you are telling ME to do: google an article that you have FINALLY,
belatedly, given me a reference to, but no url for it even now.

And I'm wondering whether you misread something Feduccia wrote
there, like you did about microraptors below. Keep reading.

> >>> This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
> >>> So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.
> >
> >> We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
> >> by looking at the article in question.
> >
> > I have no memory of that article at all, and have no idea where to look for it.
> > It is YOU, obviously, who needs to refresh your memory of the article about which
> > you "held court" in talk.origins to a rapt audience + one notorious species
> > immutabilist for 50 posts before I came on the scene.

> Feduccia A. 2002. Birds are dinosaurs: Simple answer to a complex
> problem. Auk 119:1187–1201. Try google.

Google it yourself, and tell us where in it you read these two things.
Who knows, you might be in for a nasty surprise if you finally do what you should
have done on September 15.

> > Your recollection of those heady days now has had you narrowing a claim thus:
> >
> > Coelurosaurs -----> Maniraptorans ------> Deionychids
> I will admit that in that article Feduccia failed to make clear just
> where on the theropod tree he wanted to detach a clade. Somewhere
> including all feathered theropods, but the rest is unstated. He's not
> into phylogenetic trees.

Nor into cladistic classification? Did he still rely on Linnean taxa back in 2002?

> >> Or you could check out a more
> >> recent Auk article
> >
> > ... about which you don't even claim an inconsistency, like you originally
> > claimed Feduccia made about Maniraptora, which you ambitiously changed to coelurosaurs
> > before backpedaling to Maniraptora and now to deionychids.

> That's a consistent misspelling, so I should correct you: deinonychids.

> > >in which he shows to his satisfaction that
> >> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
> >> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.

Glenn was more helpful than you: he provided an url for the article:

https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/130/1/1/5148815

And in all the 16 "microraptor" hits, he never claims that Microraptor is not a
theropod. The closest he comes is the fifth in a series of things he attributes
to your kind of "orthodoxy," beginning with:

"(5) The so-called four-winged gliding microraptors and the feathered Jurassic forms with non-theropod features are all considered dinosaurs.

He is only talking about features not typical of theropods, especially what orthodoxy calls "the frame shift" of the phalanges ("avian hand bones," see the end of the next sentence):

"Yet the microraptors have advanced avian wings with a precise arrangement of primary and secondary pennaceous feathers, and innumerable other avian features, including an avian skull and teeth, avian feet, and precise arrangement of avian hand bones. These advanced characters argue that microraptors represent derivatives of, rather than being ancestral to, the early avian radiation, with dromaeosaurids at all stages of flight and flightlessness. They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters, but these are swamped in cladistic analyses by the background noise of co-correlated characters associated with bipedalism and a mesotarsal foot joint. Interestingly, the microraptor *Sinornithosaurus*, typically reconstructed as an earthbound cursor, had elongate hindlimb flight feathers, which would have impeded ground locomotion, and exhibits a well-developed posterolateral bony flange and a strongly bowed outer metacarpal, making its hand better suited for support of primary feathers than that of *Archaeopteryx* (Paul 2002). As Paul notes (p. 407), “The combination of a well-developed posterolateral flange and a strongly bowed metacarpal III [outer metacarpal] made the hand of flightless Sinornithosaurus better suited for supporting primary feathers than was the hand of flying Archaeopteryx.”


<snip for focus>

> > You've made allegations about Feduccia of a magnitude that would make you highly indignant
> > if a similar allegation were made of you. And he isn't even here to defend himself -- and it
> > also gets your dander up when I say something the least bit negative about an
> > absent person whom you don't have a bad opinion of, yourself.

> I would be indignant because I don't do that sort of thing,

"that sort of thing" was jeering at Feduccia for apparently contradicting himself.

You HATE it when I do something like that to someone like Prum.

> while Feduccia did. And hey, you're the one who brought up Feduccia. I'm just
> following you down your own rabbit hole.

Read my reply to Erik's first post, and you will see how the rabbit hole is your making, not mine.

> > Try behaving like a responsible adult and QUOTING something that backs up something along
> > the lines of one of your claims about the earlier article. How long does it take to dig up the article,
> > copy and paste one passage out of it and then another, incompatible passage?
> >
> > I don't think it would take much longer than it took me to dig up the the post that was
> > in the middle of our earlier discussion, figure out two of the three lines of documentation
> > that I posted up there, and to paste them in. And to save you time, I'm even telling you that the last
> > thirteen lines of text in it are all you need to look at.

No reply from you. Your "rabbit hole" accusation perfectly exhibits just WHY threads
involving you and me degenerate into the sort of thing that makes either you
or erik explicitly want *me* to return to discussing paleontology.

Well, I gave you more paleontology and more cladistics in that one Feduccia quote
than you give me in most whole threads. If you can't bring yourself to quote from
that 2002 article, I'll gladly discuss an intelligent reply to what he wrote there.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

It would be Safari that's letting me down in that case. Oddly, Chrome
takes me to a different post that seems subsequent to the one you're
trying to point me at.

>>> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/UY2Hcee5Ez8/m/qHXXpRbgAgAJ
>>> Re: A new shark-toothed theropod from Uzbekistan
>>> Sep 15, 2021, 9:13:09 PM
>
>> That just goes to the OP in another thread.
>
> That OP was made well before Sep 15, 2021, 9:13:09 PM.
>
> When I clicked the above url just now, it took me straight to the post I was telling you about.
> Your last paragraph there stated:
>
> "If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."
>
> As I told Erik almost two hours before you did this post of yours,
>
> "If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-("

So impressed by your cleverness that you are forced to repeat it? Have
you bothered to look yet?

>> What does that have to do with anything?
>
> If you had read the attribution line of the OP of THIS thread, you would have seen an url of a post
> of yours to which I was replying. Don't urls show up in blue in Giganews?

>>>> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
>>>> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
>>>> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
>>>> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
>>>> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.
>>>
>>> Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
>>> modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
>>> now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
>>> only a small subclade of Maniraptora.
>
> Evidently that small subclade is the genus Deinonychus; is "deinonychids"
> simply a synonym for that genus?

The name seems to have fallen out of favor. But it includes more than
Deinonychus. At a minimum, it also includes Utahraptor. But this is a
trivial detail not relevant to my point. If Deinonychus is not a
dinosaur, then dromaeosaurs are not dinosaurs, unless you want to
dismember Dromaeosauridae.

>> Yes, that was a mistake. But the point is that he claimed birds can't be
>> dinosaurs based on that a lack of relationship to Deinonychus and in the
>> same paper claimed that Deinonychus wasn't a dinosaur either, so even if
>> it's related to Archaeopteryx, birds still aren't dinosaurs. This is not
>> a mere self-contradiction.
>
> You are piling one thing on top of another here, yet you still haven't done
> what you are telling ME to do: google an article that you have FINALLY,
> belatedly, given me a reference to, but no url for it even now.

I assure you that if you just google the title you will easily find a
copy. Why not try?

> And I'm wondering whether you misread something Feduccia wrote
> there, like you did about microraptors below. Keep reading.

Wonder no more. Just read.

>>>>> This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
>>>>> So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.
>>>
>>>> We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
>>>> by looking at the article in question.
>>>
>>> I have no memory of that article at all, and have no idea where to look for it.
>>> It is YOU, obviously, who needs to refresh your memory of the article about which
>>> you "held court" in talk.origins to a rapt audience + one notorious species
>>> immutabilist for 50 posts before I came on the scene.
>
>> Feduccia A. 2002. Birds are dinosaurs: Simple answer to a complex
>> problem. Auk 119:1187–1201. Try google.
>
> Google it yourself, and tell us where in it you read these two things.
> Who knows, you might be in for a nasty surprise if you finally do what you should
> have done on September 15.

Your resistance to looking things up, even when you've been provided an
easy reference, is odd.

>>> Your recollection of those heady days now has had you narrowing a claim thus:
>>>
>>> Coelurosaurs -----> Maniraptorans ------> Deionychids
>> I will admit that in that article Feduccia failed to make clear just
>> where on the theropod tree he wanted to detach a clade. Somewhere
>> including all feathered theropods, but the rest is unstated. He's not
>> into phylogenetic trees.
>
> Nor into cladistic classification? Did he still rely on Linnean taxa back in 2002?

I don't think that entered into the discussion. No, what he's not into
is as I said: phylogenetic trees. Also cladistic methodology in
constructing trees. Not one word on classification.

>>>> Or you could check out a more
>>>> recent Auk article
>>>
>>> ... about which you don't even claim an inconsistency, like you originally
>>> claimed Feduccia made about Maniraptora, which you ambitiously changed to coelurosaurs
>>> before backpedaling to Maniraptora and now to deionychids.
>
>> That's a consistent misspelling, so I should correct you: deinonychids.
>
>>>> in which he shows to his satisfaction that
>>>> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
>>>> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.
>
> Glenn was more helpful than you: he provided an url for the article:
>
> https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/130/1/1/5148815
>
> And in all the 16 "microraptor" hits, he never claims that Microraptor is not a
> theropod.

Agreed, he never said those words. It's necessary to read for
comprehension, not sound bites.

> The closest he comes is the fifth in a series of things he attributes
> to your kind of "orthodoxy," beginning with:
>
> "(5) The so-called four-winged gliding microraptors and the feathered Jurassic forms with non-theropod features are all considered dinosaurs.
>
> He is only talking about features not typical of theropods, especially what orthodoxy calls "the frame shift" of the phalanges ("avian hand bones," see the end of the next sentence):
>
> "Yet the microraptors have advanced avian wings with a precise arrangement of primary and secondary pennaceous feathers, and innumerable other avian features, including an avian skull and teeth, avian feet, and precise arrangement of avian hand bones. These advanced characters argue that microraptors represent derivatives of, rather than being ancestral to, the early avian radiation, with dromaeosaurids at all stages of flight and flightlessness. They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters, but these are swamped in cladistic analyses by the background noise of co-correlated characters associated with bipedalism and a mesotarsal foot joint. Interestingly, the microraptor *Sinornithosaurus*, typically reconstructed as an earthbound cursor, had elongate hindlimb flight feathers, which would have impeded ground locomotion, and exhibits a well-developed posterolateral bony flange and a strongly bowed outer metacarpal, making its hand better suited for support of primary feathers than that of *Archaeopteryx* (Paul 2002). As Paul notes (p. 407), “The combination of a well-developed posterolateral flange and a strongly bowed metacarpal III [outer metacarpal] made the hand of flightless Sinornithosaurus better suited for supporting primary feathers than was the hand of flying Archaeopteryx.”
>

How can you possibly interpret this as failing to claim that Microraptor
isn't a theropod? And Feduccia as usual conflates the disagreement over
phylogeny with a separate disagreement over the trees-down vs. ground-up
origin of flight. Paul did not.

>>> You've made allegations about Feduccia of a magnitude that would make you highly indignant
>>> if a similar allegation were made of you. And he isn't even here to defend himself -- and it
>>> also gets your dander up when I say something the least bit negative about an
>>> absent person whom you don't have a bad opinion of, yourself.
>
>> I would be indignant because I don't do that sort of thing,
>
> "that sort of thing" was jeering at Feduccia for apparently contradicting himself.

Then you have stated it poorly. Is it the jeering you object to or the
claim of contradiction?

> You HATE it when I do something like that to someone like Prum.

When have you accused Prum of contradicting himself? Was it justified?

>> while Feduccia did. And hey, you're the one who brought up Feduccia. I'm just
>> following you down your own rabbit hole.
>
> Read my reply to Erik's first post, and you will see how the rabbit hole is your making, not mine.

I read it and see nothing that's relevant to ownership of the rabbit hole.

>>> Try behaving like a responsible adult and QUOTING something that backs up something along
>>> the lines of one of your claims about the earlier article. How long does it take to dig up the article,
>>> copy and paste one passage out of it and then another, incompatible passage?
>>>
>>> I don't think it would take much longer than it took me to dig up the the post that was
>>> in the middle of our earlier discussion, figure out two of the three lines of documentation
>>> that I posted up there, and to paste them in. And to save you time, I'm even telling you that the last
>>> thirteen lines of text in it are all you need to look at.
>
> No reply from you. Your "rabbit hole" accusation perfectly exhibits just WHY threads
> involving you and me degenerate into the sort of thing that makes either you
> or erik explicitly want *me* to return to discussing paleontology.

> Well, I gave you more paleontology and more cladistics in that one Feduccia quote
> than you give me in most whole threads. If you can't bring yourself to quote from
> that 2002 article, I'll gladly discuss an intelligent reply to what he wrote there.

Been done to death long ago. Why are you trying to resurrect this silly
discussion? What is this obsession with Feduccia?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 10:09:22 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/23/21 5:50 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 12:31:16 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/22/21 6:44 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 3:31:45 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> >>>> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
> >>>> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
> >>>> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
> >>>> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
> >>>> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.
> >>>
> >>> Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
> >>> modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
> >>> now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
> >>> only a small subclade of Maniraptora.
> >
> > Evidently that small subclade is the genus Deinonychus; is "deinonychids"
> > simply a synonym for that genus?
> The name seems to have fallen out of favor. But it includes more than
> Deinonychus. At a minimum, it also includes Utahraptor.

This claim is contradicted by two separate analyses documented here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

Can you point me to an analysis that supersedes the two analyses on this Wiki page?

> But this is a
> trivial detail not relevant to my point.

But it is relevant to paleontology, which Erik Simpson claims to want me [no mention of you] to focus on.

> If Deinonychus is not a
> dinosaur, then dromaeosaurs are not dinosaurs, unless you want to
> dismember Dromaeosauridae.

You are relying on an undocumented recollection for this "point" of yours.

> >> Yes, that was a mistake. But the point is that he claimed birds can't be
> >> dinosaurs based on that a lack of relationship to Deinonychus and in the
> >> same paper claimed that Deinonychus wasn't a dinosaur either, so even if
> >> it's related to Archaeopteryx, birds still aren't dinosaurs. This is not
> >> a mere self-contradiction.
> >
> > You are piling one thing on top of another here, yet you still haven't done
> > what you are telling ME to do: google an article that you have FINALLY,
> > belatedly, given me a reference to, but no url for it even now.

> I assure you that if you just google the title you will easily find a
> copy. Why not try?

Because I doubt that I'd locate two things that you have kept changing your
story about.

> > And I'm wondering whether you misread something Feduccia wrote
> > there, like you did about microraptors below. Keep reading.

> Wonder no more. Just read.

I don't go looking for possibly unidentifiable needles in haystacks.

> >>>>> This earlier one had to do with him having made the change of mind in _Auk_.
> >>>>> So you should have no trouble digging up an exact quote.
> >>>
> >>>> We have discussed this at length before. You might refresh your memory
> >>>> by looking at the article in question.
> >>>
> >>> I have no memory of that article at all, and have no idea where to look for it.
> >>> It is YOU, obviously, who needs to refresh your memory of the article about which
> >>> you "held court" in talk.origins to a rapt audience + one notorious species
> >>> immutabilist for 50 posts before I came on the scene.
> >
> >> Feduccia A. 2002. Birds are dinosaurs: Simple answer to a complex
> >> problem. Auk 119:1187–1201. Try google.
> >
> > Google it yourself, and tell us where in it you read these two things.

You keep resisting this simple course of action, so unlike my actions wrt the "microraptor" issue below,
and so the following stands unaddressed:

> > Who knows, you might be in for a nasty surprise if you finally do what you should
> > have done on September 15.

<snip of disparaging personal remark whose content is addressed above with "needles...haystack">

> >>> Your recollection of those heady days now has had you narrowing a claim thus:
> >>>
> >>> Coelurosaurs -----> Maniraptorans ------> Deionychids

Actually "Coelurosaurs" was a titanic broadening of the claim after the initial "Dromaesaurs,"
a hefty clade intermediate between Maniraptorans and Deinonychids.

> >> I will admit that in that article Feduccia failed to make clear just
> >> where on the theropod tree he wanted to detach a clade. Somewhere
> >> including all feathered theropods, but the rest is unstated. He's not
> >> into phylogenetic trees.
> >
> > Nor into cladistic classification? Did he still rely on Linnean taxa back in 2002?

> I don't think that entered into the discussion.

I've entered it now. It is totally relevant to your claim "failed to make clear."

> No, what he's not into
> is as I said: phylogenetic trees. Also cladistic methodology in
> constructing trees. Not one word on classification.

He could have made it clear by naming some taxon, be it cladistic or Linnean. Hence this
red herring of yours is completely unsupportive of "failed to make clear".

> >>>> Or you could check out a more
> >>>> recent Auk article

<snip irrelevant later added text>

> >>>> in which he shows to his satisfaction that
> >>>> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
> >>>> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.
> >
> > Glenn was more helpful than you: he provided an url for the article:
> >
> > https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/130/1/1/5148815

Did you bother to look at it? It sure doesn't look that way from what you wrote below.

> > And in all the 16 "microraptor" hits, he never claims that Microraptor is not a
> > theropod.

> Agreed, he never said those words. It's necessary to read for
> comprehension, not sound bites.

You are relying on a single sound bite below, a sentence that talks
about "features" (characters) and not about taxonomic placement.

> > The closest he comes is the fifth in a series of things he attributes
> > to your kind of "orthodoxy," beginning with:
> >
> > "(5) The so-called four-winged gliding microraptors and the feathered Jurassic forms with non-theropod features are all considered dinosaurs.
> >
> > He is only talking about features not typical of theropods, especially what orthodoxy calls "the frame shift" of the
> > phalanges ("avian hand bones," see the end of the next sentence):
> >
> > "Yet the microraptors have advanced avian wings with a precise arrangement of primary and secondary pennaceous feathers, and innumerable other avian features, including an avian skull and teeth, avian feet, and precise arrangement of avian hand bones. These advanced characters argue that microraptors represent derivatives of, rather than being ancestral to, the early avian radiation, with dromaeosaurids at all stages of flight and flightlessness. They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters, but these are swamped in cladistic analyses by the background noise of co-correlated characters associated with bipedalism and a mesotarsal foot joint. Interestingly, the microraptor *Sinornithosaurus*, typically reconstructed as an earthbound cursor, had elongate hindlimb flight feathers, which would have impeded ground locomotion, and exhibits a well-developed posterolateral bony flange and a strongly bowed outer metacarpal, making its hand better suited for support of primary feathers than that of *Archaeopteryx* (Paul 2002). As Paul notes (p. 407), “The combination of a well-developed posterolateral flange and a strongly bowed metacarpal III [outer metacarpal] made the hand of flightless Sinornithosaurus better suited for supporting primary feathers than was the hand of flying Archaeopteryx.”
> >

> How can you possibly interpret this as failing to claim that Microraptor
> isn't a theropod?

Why are you asking this loaded question here, after a listing of features that you
do not deny to be avian?

Nor do you argue that *any* of them are found in theropods besides the ones that people you
disparagingly dismiss as "fringe" decided (close to a decade *earlier*) to be nested within what
was then called "Aves," WITHOUT moving them out of Theropoda.

When I say "earlier" I mean: before this 2013 article which you brought up but were too lazy
to find an url for, unlike Glenn.

And you are totally ignoring the issue of "They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters..."
Do you claim that they are NOT "uncoded"? I know of some that are NOT coded: feathers and dinofuzz,
which orthodoxy labels as "protofeathers," and everything thought by orthodoxy to be in between.

> And Feduccia as usual conflates the disagreement over
> phylogeny with a separate disagreement over the trees-down vs. ground-up
> origin of flight.

Illogical use of "conflates" noted. If you didn't focus on one isolated claim in the long
article, you would know that it isn't afflicted with tunnel vision like you are. Quite the opposite.


> Paul did not.

More tunnel vision by yourself. Do you even care about the solidly paleontological
comments that Paul made?


< snip of things to be dealt with later>

> > Well, I gave you more paleontology and more cladistics in that one Feduccia quote
> > than you give me in most whole threads. If you can't bring yourself to quote from
> > that 2002 article, I'll gladly discuss an intelligent reply to what he wrote there.

By "there" I meant the quote from that 2013 article up there.

> Been done to death long ago.

If so, it was by people other than yourself, because I've never seen you address any of the
paleontology or cladistics that followed the opening sentence of what I quoted.
That is, with one exception: we did discuss the "frame shift" issue a number of times before,
which is why I brought it up right after that opening sentence.

> Why are you trying to resurrect this silly discussion?

There is nothing silly about the host of topics that followed that first sentence.
It's obvious that you are afflicted with tunnel vision about the whole paragraph.

> What is this obsession with Feduccia?

Your tunnel vision marks it as your obsession.

[John Harshman]

On 9/23/21 11:57 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 10:09:22 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/23/21 5:50 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 12:31:16 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 9/22/21 6:44 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 3:31:45 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>
>>>>>> What I recall from the article we were presumably discussing is that
>>>>>> Feduccia spends the first part of it showing that Deinonychus carpals
>>>>>> were not homologous to Archaeopteryx carpals and thus the former is a
>>>>>> dinosaur while the latter is not, and then pivoting to a claim that
>>>>>> feathers on deinonychids show that they are birds, not dinosaurs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, that won't do. You have made a blunder beginning with "Of course..." and
>>>>> modified your claim. Now you have further modified your claim and are
>>>>> now accusing Feduccia of a self-contradiction on a single detail involving
>>>>> only a small subclade of Maniraptora.
>>>
>>> Evidently that small subclade is the genus Deinonychus; is "deinonychids"
>>> simply a synonym for that genus?
>> The name seems to have fallen out of favor. But it includes more than
>> Deinonychus. At a minimum, it also includes Utahraptor.
>
> This claim is contradicted by two separate analyses documented here:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
>
> Can you point me to an analysis that supersedes the two analyses on this Wiki page?

As I said, the name seems to have fallen out of favor.

>> But this is a
>> trivial detail not relevant to my point.
>
> But it is relevant to paleontology, which Erik Simpson claims to want me [no mention of you] to focus on.

It's hardly relevant to paleontology. It's a trivial point of nomenclature.

> > If Deinonychus is not a
>> dinosaur, then dromaeosaurs are not dinosaurs, unless you want to
>> dismember Dromaeosauridae.
>
> You are relying on an undocumented recollection for this "point" of yours.

You are free to look it up.

>>>> Yes, that was a mistake. But the point is that he claimed birds can't be
>>>> dinosaurs based on that a lack of relationship to Deinonychus and in the
>>>> same paper claimed that Deinonychus wasn't a dinosaur either, so even if
>>>> it's related to Archaeopteryx, birds still aren't dinosaurs. This is not
>>>> a mere self-contradiction.
>>>
>>> You are piling one thing on top of another here, yet you still haven't done
>>> what you are telling ME to do: google an article that you have FINALLY,
>>> belatedly, given me a reference to, but no url for it even now.
>
>> I assure you that if you just google the title you will easily find a
>> copy. Why not try?
>
> Because I doubt that I'd locate two things that you have kept changing your
> story about.

Why not look? Think of your moment of triumph when you don't find it!

If you're talking about paraphyly, I don't think Feduccia ever expressed
an opinion on that.

>> No, what he's not into
>> is as I said: phylogenetic trees. Also cladistic methodology in
>> constructing trees. Not one word on classification.
>
> He could have made it clear by naming some taxon, be it cladistic or Linnean. Hence this
> red herring of yours is completely unsupportive of "failed to make clear".

Yes, he could have. He didn't. And that's why I said he "failed to make
clear". How is that not clear?

>>>>>> Or you could check out a more
>>>>>> recent Auk article
>
> <snip irrelevant later added text>
>
>>>>>> in which he shows to his satisfaction that
>>>>>> Microraptor (and by extension other dromaeosaurs) is not a theropod:
>>>>>> Feduccia A. 2013. Bird origins anew. Auk 130:1-12.
>>>
>>> Glenn was more helpful than you: he provided an url for the article:
>>>
>>> https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/130/1/1/5148815
>
> Did you bother to look at it? It sure doesn't look that way from what you wrote below.

Yes, I looked. I actually read what he said rather than looking for
particular words.

>>> And in all the 16 "microraptor" hits, he never claims that Microraptor is not a
>>> theropod.
>
>> Agreed, he never said those words. It's necessary to read for
>> comprehension, not sound bites.
>
> You are relying on a single sound bite below, a sentence that talks
> about "features" (characters) and not about taxonomic placement.

In context it's perfectly clear what he's saying.

>>> The closest he comes is the fifth in a series of things he attributes
>>> to your kind of "orthodoxy," beginning with:
>>>
>>> "(5) The so-called four-winged gliding microraptors and the feathered Jurassic forms with non-theropod features are all considered dinosaurs.
>>>
>>> He is only talking about features not typical of theropods, especially what orthodoxy calls "the frame shift" of the
>>> phalanges ("avian hand bones," see the end of the next sentence):
>>>
>>> "Yet the microraptors have advanced avian wings with a precise arrangement of primary and secondary pennaceous feathers, and innumerable other avian features, including an avian skull and teeth, avian feet, and precise arrangement of avian hand bones. These advanced characters argue that microraptors represent derivatives of, rather than being ancestral to, the early avian radiation, with dromaeosaurids at all stages of flight and flightlessness. They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters, but these are swamped in cladistic analyses by the background noise of co-correlated characters associated with bipedalism and a mesotarsal foot joint. Interestingly, the microraptor *Sinornithosaurus*, typically reconstructed as an earthbound cursor, had elongate hindlimb flight feathers, which would have impeded ground locomotion, and exhibits a well-developed posterolateral bony flange and a strongly bowed outer metacarpal, making its hand better suited for support of primary feathers than that of *Archaeopteryx* (Paul 2002). As Paul notes (p. 407), “The combination of a well-developed posterolateral flange and a strongly bowed metacarpal III [outer metacarpal] made the hand of flightless Sinornithosaurus better suited for supporting primary feathers than was the hand of flying Archaeopteryx.”
>>>
>
>> How can you possibly interpret this as failing to claim that Microraptor
>> isn't a theropod?
>
> Why are you asking this loaded question here, after a listing of features that you
> do not deny to be avian?
>
> Nor do you argue that *any* of them are found in theropods besides the ones that people you
> disparagingly dismiss as "fringe" decided (close to a decade *earlier*) to be nested within what
> was then called "Aves," WITHOUT moving them out of Theropoda.
>
> When I say "earlier" I mean: before this 2013 article which you brought up but were too lazy
> to find an url for, unlike Glenn.
>
> And you are totally ignoring the issue of "They are literally bristling with uncoded avian characters..."
> Do you claim that they are NOT "uncoded"? I know of some that are NOT coded: feathers and dinofuzz,
> which orthodoxy labels as "protofeathers," and everything thought by orthodoxy to be in between.

At least one of us has completely lost sight of what the argument here
was over. Yes, he's claiming that Microraptor and various other
maniraptorans are birds, not theropods. He favors the view that birds
are only convergent with theropods and are separately descended from an
early archosaur. MANIAC, in other words.

>> And Feduccia as usual conflates the disagreement over
>> phylogeny with a separate disagreement over the trees-down vs. ground-up
>> origin of flight.
>
> Illogical use of "conflates" noted. If you didn't focus on one isolated claim in the long
> article, you would know that it isn't afflicted with tunnel vision like you are. Quite the opposite.

I can certainly conclude that one of us didn't read the article for
comprehension.

>> Paul did not.
>
> More tunnel vision by yourself. Do you even care about the solidly paleontological
> comments that Paul made?

They aren't relevant to the question of whether birds (and various other
maniraptorans) are theropods, which was my point.

> < snip of things to be dealt with later>
>
>
>>> Well, I gave you more paleontology and more cladistics in that one Feduccia quote
>>> than you give me in most whole threads. If you can't bring yourself to quote from
>>> that 2002 article, I'll gladly discuss an intelligent reply to what he wrote there.
>
> By "there" I meant the quote from that 2013 article up there.
>
>
>> Been done to death long ago.
>
> If so, it was by people other than yourself, because I've never seen you address any of the
> paleontology or cladistics that followed the opening sentence of what I quoted.
> That is, with one exception: we did discuss the "frame shift" issue a number of times before,
> which is why I brought it up right after that opening sentence.
>
>
>> Why are you trying to resurrect this silly discussion?
>
> There is nothing silly about the host of topics that followed that first sentence.
> It's obvious that you are afflicted with tunnel vision about the whole paragraph.
>
>
>> What is this obsession with Feduccia?
>
> Your tunnel vision marks it as your obsession.

I didn't bring it up, mate.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 1:19:50 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 7:33:25 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 10:11:18 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 6:44:17 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > > You've made allegations about Feduccia of a magnitude that would make you highly indignant
> > > > if a similar allegation were made of you. And he isn't even here to defend himself -- and it
> > > > also gets your dander up when I say something the least bit negative about an
> > > > absent person whom you don't have a bad opinion of, yourself.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Try behaving like a responsible adult and QUOTING something that backs up something along
> > > > the lines of one of your claims about the earlier article. How long does it take to dig up the article,
> > > > copy and paste one passage out of it and then another, incompatible passage?
> > > >
> > > > I don't think it would take much longer than it took me to dig up the the post that was
> > > > in the middle of our earlier discussion, figure out two of the three lines of documentation
> > > > that I posted up there, and to paste them in. And to save you time, I'm even telling you that the last
> > > > thirteen lines of text in it are all you need to look at.

> > Erik, I suppose the following one-liner of yours could come under the "Dogmatism" rubric. :)

> > > Haven't we seen this movie before?

> > Never. Nothing at all like it. Have you ever seen Harshman's main group about which Feduccia
> > was allegedly saying inconsistent things evolved like this in the space of ONE WEEK?
> >
> > Dromaeosauridae ------> Coelurosauria -----> Maniraptora -----> Deinonychus
> >
> > You really need to get skeptical about your memory, Erik.
> >
> > To save readers trouble: Maniraptora is a subclade of Coelurosauria, while Dromaeosauridae is a subclade of Maniraptora, and Deinonychus is a genus in Dromaeosauridae. Apparently "deinonychids" is a synonym
> > for that one iconic genus, the sickle-clawed Deinonychus.

Harshman has claimed "deinonychids" included more, specifically *Utahraptor*, but the two phylogenetic
trees at the bottom of the following webpage strongly contradict this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

About an hour ago, I've asked Harshman whether the analyses that produced these trees
have been superseded. He completely ignored the question in his shoot-from-the-hip reply,
and moved the goalposts.


> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptora
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus
>
> > And, to save y'all even more trouble, what Harshman wrote a week ago, on that
> > other thread, was:
> >
> > "If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."
> >
> > If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-(

> I confess I haven't been following this exchange closely.

Yes, that is apparent from the way you want ME to change the subject. Well, I have, but Harshman
hasn't: see above about him ducking a question about phylogeny.

> I have a general interest in avian phylogeny,
> althoug it isn't at the top of my list.

Could you ask Harshman whether those two phylogenetic trees of Dromaesauridae have been superseded?
I'm sure he would give you, his most loyal ally in both talk.origins and here, a straight answer.

> But this isn't about avain phylogeny. What Feduccia thought about it,
> what, a decade ago?, wasn't very relevant then and is much less so now. If that isn't the topic,

Harshman insists on it being the topic. I've also made him aware of a host of purely paleontological
topics in a quote from a paper by Feduccia. Harshman has declined my first offer to go into it.
And now, in the same post where he ducked the question about phylogeny,
he breezed past it as if it weren't there.

> and you're more concerned with Harshman's account of Feduccia's thought,

It's all Harshman is showing interest in, see above.

> that has nothing to do
> with avian phylogeny, and I have zero interest. THe "movie" I spoke of referred to
> your presentation as Feducccia's bulldog.

Like hell I am. All I've ever done on this thread is to keep asking Harshman for a pair of
quotes that would show that his derogatory allegation of the moment is correct, about something
he is alleging about Feduccia. [See above about how that has kept changing.] He may have finally
settled on a derogatory claim that he won't change, but he keeps refusing to document it.

Are you happy with that?

> No interest there, either. I apologize if I distracted you
> from your purpose. Carry on.

If my comments above have distracted you from YOUR purpose, I'm sure Harshman will be
glad if you carry on.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria
> >>
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptora
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
> > >

> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus
> > > And, to save y'all even more trouble, what Harshman wrote a week ago, on that
> > > other thread, was:
> > >
> > > "If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."
> > >
> > > If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-(
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
> > > Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
> > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

> > I confessI haven't been following this exchange closely. I have a general interest in avian phylogeny,
> > althoug it isn't at the top of my list. But this isn't about avain phylogeny.

It is now, as I said in reply to erik a few minutes ago, and also about lots of details about paleontology of Mesozoic
birds and related animals. At least, I'm trying to make it that way, but as I told erik, Harshman keeps
refusing invitations to follow suit. And I suspect Erik will ape his role model in this.

> > What Feduccia thought about it,
> > what, a decade ago?, wasn't very relevant then and is much less so now. If that isn't the topic,
> > and you're more concerned with Harshman's account of Feduccia's thought, that has nothing to do
> > with avian phylogeny, and I have zero interest. THe "movie" I spoke of referred to
> > your presentation as Feducccia's bulldog.
> > No interest there, either. I apologize if I distracted you
> > from your purpose. Carry on.

I've thoroughly addressed this in my reply to Erik. I think you will enjoy reading my reply
AND reading any replies either Erik or John makes to it.


> https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/68/5/840/5315532?login=true

This is the 2013 article that Harshman gave a reference for, but he was
too lazy (or afraid?) to provide an url. Thanks for doing it yourself.


> https://benthamopen.com/ABSTRACT/TOOENIJ-11-27

A very telling review of a book that Harshman probably loves, assuming
he's bothered to read it.


> https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lt78DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=feduccia+avian+fossils&ots=UDFTWI7r8g&sig=3YSHoe721uinrS5mhoO48U4lOLQ#v=onepage&q=feduccia%20avian%20fossils&f=false

A book designed to be readable by a general audience, but marred by Feduccia's repeatedly
bringing up the controversies in which he is embroiled. _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_,
which is much more deeply scientific and full of highly detailed information,
is actually less heavy handed about it.

In fairness to Feduccia, he is very much getting along in years and this may be his last
chance to make a wider audience aware that "birds are dinosaurs" is built on a less
secure foundation that anti-Feduccia zealots would have the general public believe.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Given that neither tree contains a node labeled Deinonychidae, I'm
puzzled how you think they contradict anything.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
>
> About an hour ago, I've asked Harshman whether the analyses that produced these trees
> have been superseded. He completely ignored the question in his shoot-from-the-hip reply,
> and moved the goalposts.

I answered the question as it deserved, by rejecting it as based on a
false assumption. Deinonychidae is a family name once proposed for
Deinonychus and some of its close relatives. It's not used much these
days, and perhaps it's a junior synonym of names that are more commonly
used.

>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptora
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus
>>
>>> And, to save y'all even more trouble, what Harshman wrote a week ago, on that
>>> other thread, was:
>>>
>>> "If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs."
>>>
>>> If that's what Harshman remembers best, I'd hate to think what he remembers worst. :-) :-(
>
>> I confess I haven't been following this exchange closely.
>
> Yes, that is apparent from the way you want ME to change the subject. Well, I have, but Harshman
> hasn't: see above about him ducking a question about phylogeny.

You are confused. It's a question about nomenclature, not phylogeny.

>> I have a general interest in avian phylogeny,
>> althoug it isn't at the top of my list.
>
> Could you ask Harshman whether those two phylogenetic trees of Dromaesauridae have been superseded?
> I'm sure he would give you, his most loyal ally in both talk.origins and here, a straight answer.

You constantly speak in terms of loyalties, cliques, alliances, and role
models, all of which are imaginary.

>> But this isn't about avain phylogeny. What Feduccia thought about it,
>> what, a decade ago?, wasn't very relevant then and is much less so now. If that isn't the topic,
>
> Harshman insists on it being the topic. I've also made him aware of a host of purely paleontological
> topics in a quote from a paper by Feduccia. Harshman has declined my first offer to go into it.
> And now, in the same post where he ducked the question about phylogeny,
> he breezed past it as if it weren't there.

Not sure what point you're trying to make with those topics. It seems
very confused.

>> and you're more concerned with Harshman's account of Feduccia's thought,
>
> It's all Harshman is showing interest in, see above.
>
>
>> that has nothing to do
>> with avian phylogeny, and I have zero interest. THe "movie" I spoke of referred to
>> your presentation as Feducccia's bulldog.
>
> Like hell I am. All I've ever done on this thread is to keep asking Harshman for a pair of
> quotes that would show that his derogatory allegation of the moment is correct, about something
> he is alleging about Feduccia. [See above about how that has kept changing.] He may have finally
> settled on a derogatory claim that he won't change, but he keeps refusing to document it.

Feel free to read Feduccia 2002. Why won't you?

> Are you happy with that?
>
>
>> No interest there, either. I apologize if I distracted you
>> from your purpose. Carry on.
>
> If my comments above have distracted you from YOUR purpose, I'm sure Harshman will be
> glad if you carry on.

Can't you see why other people consider all this talk of conspiracies
paranoid?

[Peter Nyikos]

This post is focused on an on-topic issue of phylogeny, for which the above provides context.

> > Harshman has claimed "deinonychids" included more, specifically *Utahraptor*, but the two phylogenetic
> > trees at the bottom of the following webpage strongly contradict this:

> Given that neither tree contains a node labeled Deinonychidae, I'm
> puzzled how you think they contradict anything.

Both have a branch tip labeled "Deinonychus," and both have one in a very different
place labeled "Utahraptor." Scroll down to the bottom of the web page.

> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

Really, now, how could anything be clearer than this?

> > About an hour ago, I've asked Harshman whether the analyses that produced these trees
> > have been superseded. He completely ignored the question in his shoot-from-the-hip reply,
> > and moved the goalposts.

> I answered the question as it deserved, by rejecting it as based on a
> false assumption.

Illogically rejecting it: take a look at the two trees and ponder the implications of what you see there
for your next comment. My questions below should help you.

> Deinonychidae is a family name once proposed for
> Deinonychus and some of its close relatives.

Did it swallow up the subfamily Dromaesaurinae, as the first tree shows it would do?

Did it swallow up both Dromaesaurinae and Velociraptorinae, as the second tree shows it would do?

If you combine the swallowing-ups, the trees will have it include all of Eudromaeosauria,
and the genus Tsaagan. Is this really what you meant by "some of its close relatives"?


Remainder deleted, lest it distract you from the above questions.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

Not sure what your point is here. Unless you have a definition for
Deinonychidae you can't say whether that very different place is within
it or not.

>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
>
> Really, now, how could anything be clearer than this?

You imagine clarity, but the clarity is the result of your confusion
about the issue.

>>> About an hour ago, I've asked Harshman whether the analyses that produced these trees
>>> have been superseded. He completely ignored the question in his shoot-from-the-hip reply,
>>> and moved the goalposts.
>
>> I answered the question as it deserved, by rejecting it as based on a
>> false assumption.
>
> Illogically rejecting it: take a look at the two trees and ponder the implications of what you see there
> for your next comment. My questions below should help you.

Sure, though I'm not optimistic.

>> Deinonychidae is a family name once proposed for
>> Deinonychus and some of its close relatives.
>
> Did it swallow up the subfamily Dromaesaurinae, as the first tree shows it would do?
>
> Did it swallow up both Dromaesaurinae and Velociraptorinae, as the second tree shows it would do?
>
> If you combine the swallowing-ups, the trees will have it include all of Eudromaeosauria,
> and the genus Tsaagan. Is this really what you meant by "some of its close relatives"?

I can't answer the question. I don't know the proposed definition of
Deinonychidae. The only thing I could find out about it quickly was that
Utahraptor was another proposed member. And of course the name may have
assumed a different tree from either of the ones shown.

> Remainder deleted, lest it distract you from the above questions.

This is a trivial point having nothing to do with phylogeny. I think
you're just trying very hard to show that I'm wrong about something
without regard to anything else, just because you want me to be wrong
about something, a moment of triumph for you.

[Peter Nyikos]

What I had earlier wanted to know whether "deinonychids" [see above]
was a synonym for *Deinonychus*. Note the lack of the -idae ending which would have
made such a question sound naive.

> >>> but the two phylogenetic
> >>> trees at the bottom of the following webpage strongly contradict this:
> >
> >> Given that neither tree contains a node labeled Deinonychidae, I'm
> >> puzzled how you think they contradict anything.

> > Both have a branch tip labeled "Deinonychus," and both have one in a very different
> > place labeled "Utahraptor." Scroll down to the bottom of the web page.

> Not sure what your point is here.

The point was further down in this same post. Once you saw it, it should
have become obvious that the following comment completely missed the point:

> Unless you have a definition for
> Deinonychidae you can't say whether that very different place is within
> it or not.

You always seem to be in a hurry, preventing you from scrolling up and deleting inappropriate comments.
Why? do you have a job that is more consuming than mine as a full-time Professor?

> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae
> >
> > Really, now, how could anything be clearer than this?

> You imagine clarity, but the clarity is the result of your confusion
> about the issue.

There was no confusion, as you should have seen if you had
bothered to read to the end before typing this.
My comment was a tad premature, that's all.

> >>> About an hour ago, I've asked Harshman whether the analyses that produced these trees
> >>> have been superseded. He completely ignored the question in his shoot-from-the-hip reply,
> >>> and moved the goalposts.
> >
> >> I answered the question as it deserved, by rejecting it as based on a
> >> false assumption.
> >
> > Illogically rejecting it: take a look at the two trees and ponder the implications of what you see there
> > for your next comment. My questions below should help you.

> Sure, though I'm not optimistic.

> >> Deinonychidae is a family name once proposed for
> >> Deinonychus and some of its close relatives.
> >
> > Did it swallow up the subfamily Dromaesaurinae, as the first tree shows it would do?
> >
> > Did it swallow up both Dromaesaurinae and Velociraptorinae, as the second tree shows it would do?
> >
> > If you combine the swallowing-ups, the trees will have it include all of Eudromaeosauria,
> > and the genus Tsaagan. Is this really what you meant by "some of its close relatives"?

> I can't answer the question. I don't know the proposed definition of
> Deinonychidae. The only thing I could find out about it quickly was that
> Utahraptor was another proposed member.

"quickly" again suggests that something is making you do things in a big hurry.
What is it?

>And of course the name may have
> assumed a different tree from either of the ones shown.

Do you know anyone who could help you find out? Or is it just that you
can't be bothered to find out more?

Anyway, you seem to have answered a question that I was hoping Erik
would ask you, since you ducked it when I asked you: Do you know whether
either tree has been superseded by some new analysis?

And the answer is, you don't. One tree goes back to 2015, one to 2017.
And that's a problem, given the big discrepancies.

> > Remainder deleted, lest it distract you from the above questions.

> This is a trivial point having nothing to do with phylogeny.

That's because you missed the real point I was building up to, but
it should have been obvious from the big discrepancies.

It is very much a problem of phylogeny to ascertain which, if either of these
trees, is the "true to the best of our data" tree. If you can't see that even now,
then I have to wonder how seriously you have thought about the trees that
challenge the conventional "wisdom" that dromeosaurs [as in "Eudromaeosauria"]
are not secondarily flightless birds.


<snip nasty, irrelevant, insincere personal remark by yourself>

If you claim to be innocent of these charges, expect a thorough, many-faceted rebuttal.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

University of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

Simple explanation: the comments weren't inappropriate.

Another question based on a false assumption. No point in answering.

>> And of course the name may have
>> assumed a different tree from either of the ones shown.
>
> Do you know anyone who could help you find out? Or is it just that you
> can't be bothered to find out more?

The latter.

> Anyway, you seem to have answered a question that I was hoping Erik
> would ask you, since you ducked it when I asked you: Do you know whether
> either tree has been superseded by some new analysis?
>
> And the answer is, you don't. One tree goes back to 2015, one to 2017.
> And that's a problem, given the big discrepancies.

>>> Remainder deleted, lest it distract you from the above questions.
>
>> This is a trivial point having nothing to do with phylogeny.
>
> That's because you missed the real point I was building up to, but
> it should have been obvious from the big discrepancies.

You really have to start actually saying what you mean rather than
dropping little hints, assuming you want anyone to understand you.

> It is very much a problem of phylogeny to ascertain which, if either of these
> trees, is the "true to the best of our data" tree. If you can't see that even now,
> then I have to wonder how seriously you have thought about the trees that
> challenge the conventional "wisdom" that dromeosaurs [as in "Eudromaeosauria"]
> are not secondarily flightless birds.

I had no idea you were interested in the differences between the trees.
You never said so until just now. So far, this has all been about
whether Deinonychidae should include Utahraptor. Now, if you have any
questions about the phylogenies, I suggest you consult the papers from
which the trees were taken, look at their data matrices, and try to
determine what caused the differences.

> <snip nasty, irrelevant, insincere personal remark by yourself>

You accuse me of being insincere? On what basis?

> If you claim to be innocent of these charges, expect a thorough, many-faceted rebuttal.

What charges? I can't claim innocence unless I see some actual charges.
I certainly have no interest in your thorough, many-faceted rebuttal.

You are very confused about many things, among them whether trees can
tell you whether a given group is secondarily flightless. Again I
mention Greg Paul, who places the origin of flight deep in the theropod
tree without altering the topology of that tree from the usual one.
Whether birds are theropods is a completely separate question from
whether various maniraptorans are secondarily flightless or whether
flight happened from the ground up or trees down or a host of other
possible questions.

[erik simpson]

I can't tell if you're actually interested in this sort of thing, but:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134/S1028334X21070047.pdf

presents another, later (2021) phylogenetic tree. Note that Deinonychus appears, but no "deinonychidae". The same tree in a
slightly more familar format is displayed in the Wiki entry on Deinonychus. Your quest for a "true" tree
is confusing to me. Trees are produced using data. DIfferent data, different trees. They're hypotheses, right?
As far as paleontology goes, "truth" and certainty is only possessed by creationists and fools. At some
fine-grained level it's problematic to identify exact relationships between organisms that have been
extinct for ten of millions of year, particularly from only morphological evidence.

[erik simpson]

Oops, that link no longer works. Try

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099077/pdf/41598_2020_Article_61480.pdf

[erik simpson]

And scratch that, copy-paste error. Sorry

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 4:25:56 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/24/21 12:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 8:44:33 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/23/21 2:49 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 4:54:48 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> >>>> Deinonychidae is a family name once proposed for
> >>>> Deinonychus and some of its close relatives.
> >>>
> >>> Did it swallow up the subfamily Dromaesaurinae, as the first tree shows it would do?
> >>>
> >>> Did it swallow up both Dromaesaurinae and Velociraptorinae, as the second tree shows it would do?
> >>>
> >>> If you combine the swallowing-ups, the trees will have it include all of Eudromaeosauria,
> >>> and the genus Tsaagan. Is this really what you meant by "some of its close relatives"?
> >
> >> I can't answer the question. I don't know the proposed definition of
> >> Deinonychidae. The only thing I could find out about it quickly was that
> >> Utahraptor was another proposed member.
> >
> > "quickly" again suggests that something is making you do things in a big hurry.
> > What is it?

> Another question based on a false assumption.

What's false about it? I see no sign of you trying to find out in all the time that elapsed since then.

> >> And of course the name may have
> >> assumed a different tree from either of the ones shown.
> >
> > Do you know anyone who could help you find out? Or is it just that you
> > can't be bothered to find out more?

> The latter.

Then my comments near the end below take on added importance.

<snip for focus>

> >> This is a trivial point having nothing to do with phylogeny.

Here, you were still hung up on the point about what was and was not
in Deinonychidae. Evidently, you temporarily forgot about the big discrepancies,
otherwise you would have realized that they have very much to do with phylogeny.

> > [You say that] because you missed the real point I was building up to, but

> > it should have been obvious from the big discrepancies.

Let me qualify that "should have been": obviously, if you ARE in a big hurry
to answer my posts and be done with it, there is no offense meant,
because you didn't have time to reflect on the implications of what I was writing.

> You really have to start actually saying what you mean

False assumption here: I had another point that I wanted to be clarified before going on.
I did not want you to be distracted if you were too rushed for time to clarify the question
of what you meant by "close relatives."

Closeness is a relative concept; that is why I wanted to know how you were using
it on this occasion.

> rather than
> dropping little hints, assuming you want anyone to understand you.

You understood me just fine: you seem to be complaining because you
weren't able to foretell the future, but there could be a valid reason for that,
as suggested above ["didn't have time to reflect"].

> > It is very much a problem of phylogeny to ascertain which, if either of these
> > trees, is the "true to the best of our data" tree. If you can't see that even now,
> > then I have to wonder how seriously you have thought about the trees that
> > challenge the conventional "wisdom" that dromeosaurs [as in "Eudromaeosauria"]
> > are not secondarily flightless birds.

> I had no idea you were interested in the differences between the trees.
> You never said so until just now.

I'm surprised YOU, a systematist, don't seem to have been interested in the numerous
discrepancies. But perhaps you were too rushed for time to actually take a look
at the trees. Believe me, they are well worth a look, even individually, apart from
there being big discrepancies.

>So far, this has all been about
> whether Deinonychidae should include Utahraptor.

As you can see, it hasn't been about it for at least one post.
[Is this really what you meant by "some of its close relatives"?]

> Now, if you have any questions about the phylogenies, I suggest you consult the papers from
> which the trees were taken, look at their data matrices, and try to
> determine what caused the differences.

Don't you ever want to get back in the business of publishing phylogenies?
This could be a good opportunity; you could be doing the field a big service.
And you are far better at THAT than I am, or could become in the foreseeable future;
I am too busy with my own mathematical research.

> > <snip nasty, irrelevant, insincere personal remark by yourself>

> You accuse me of being insincere?

Yes.

> On what basis?

Unless you claim that you were sincere, there is no point in me telling you.

> > If you claim to be innocent of these charges, expect a thorough, many-faceted rebuttal.

> What charges?

Insincerity, nastiness, irrelevance. Are you deliberately playing dumb? I'd prefer not
to add *that* to these three charges.

> I can't claim innocence unless I see some actual charges.

If you've already forgotten what you wrote and are too rushed for time to
bother looking, I'll gladly repost the words I snipped. Once you do look,
I think you will be able to decide to claim whether you are innocent of one or more
of the three charges, or not.

> I certainly have no interest in your thorough, many-faceted rebuttal.

Unless you claim innocence, there is no reason to be interested in a nonexistent rebuttal.
Did you misunderstand my qualifier "If you claim to be innocent..." ?


Concluded in separate reply to this post, soon after I see that this one has posted.


Peter Nyikos

Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 4:25:56 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

Picking up where I left off:

> You are very confused about many things,

What you say next does not provide evidence for this gratuitous insult; quite the contrary.

> among them whether trees can
> tell you whether a given group is secondarily flightless.

You are trolling. I've known since 1996 that trees like these are based on cladistic analyses.
The systematists you've insulted as being "fringe" all used them.

In fact, a lot of your contempt for Feduccia is based on him considering some characters
to be far more important than others. Asymmetrical flight remiges are of paramount
importance to him, while you and everyone you have a good opinion of simply leaves them
off the cladistic analyses.

I've complained about this omission many times over the years. Hence my charge of you trolling,
something you have done many times in the past decade in talk.origins, and since early 2018
in sci.bio.paleontology.

> Again I
> mention Greg Paul, who places the origin of flight deep in the theropod
> tree without altering the topology of that tree from the usual one.

You are just intensifying your trolling, in the form of what I call a Phantom Error
Correction Scam. This consists of lecturing someone about something about
the scammer as though correcting some error by the target of the scam,
yet without any sign of any such error anywhere.

Sometimes, like here, the scammer knows full well that the one being lectured to
knows more than enough to make the lecture a sham.

> Whether birds are theropods is a completely separate question from
> whether various maniraptorans are secondarily flightless or whether
> flight happened from the ground up or trees down or a host of other
> possible questions.

"belaboring the obvious" is all I would have said if you hadn't insulted
me by your trolling.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 9/24/21 4:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 4:25:56 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

Sorry, but I can't respond to either of those two posts, as they consist
almost entirely of accusatory bullshit. If you strip all that out and
start talking about paleontology, I'll be glad to respond. There does
seem to be a bit of paleontology buried in there, but the noise to
signal ratio is just too high.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 5:59:58 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 2:58:45 PM UTC-7, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 2:12:01 PM UTC-7, erik simpson wrote:

It feels a little funny to be talking to "the Ghost of Erik Two Posts Past," Erik,
but you brought up a number of different issues which it is important to clarify,
that I thought it best to handle each one separately.

> > > On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 12:04:59 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

As you can see from what I wrote here, I withdraw my earlier request to you:

> > > > Anyway, you seem to have answered a question that I was hoping Erik
> > > > would ask you, since you ducked it when I asked you: Do you know whether
> > > > either tree has been superseded by some new analysis?
> > > >
> > > > And the answer is, you don't. One tree goes back to 2015, one to 2017.
> > > > And that's a problem, given the big discrepancies.

> > > > > > Remainder deleted, lest it distract you from the above questions.
> > > >
> > > > > This is a trivial point having nothing to do with phylogeny.
> > > > That's because you missed the real point I was building up to, but
> > > > it should have been obvious from the big discrepancies.
> > > >
> > > > It is very much a problem of phylogeny to ascertain which, if either of these
> > > > trees, is the "true to the best of our data" tree. If you can't see that even now,
> > > > then I have to wonder how seriously you have thought about the trees that
> > > > challenge the conventional "wisdom" that dromeosaurs [as in "Eudromaeosauria"]
> > > > are not secondarily flightless birds.

I left in the above, because you mention only the first word I put in "scare quotes" in your response:


<snip for focus>

> > > I can't tell if you're actually interested in this sort of thing, but:

I am very interested, more so than Harshman seems to be. I have another request for you,
one I hope you won't have to act on, for a similar reason as for that earlier request; see below.

> > > https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1134/S1028334X21070047.pdf
> > >
> > > presents another, later (2021) phylogenetic tree. Note that Deinonychus appears, but no "deinonychidae". The same tree in a
> > > slightly more familar format is displayed in the Wiki entry on Deinonychus.

It also presents one of the trees, by DePalma et al in 2015, that I was telling Harshman about, in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

The 2021 tree is a lot closer to the other, 2017 tree in the above webpage. The two agree on the topology
of the subtree containing Deinonychus, Velociraptor, Tsagaan, and Linheraptor.

There are two noteworthy differences: Saurorntholestes is outside the smallest subclade that contains these
four genera in the 2021 analysis, while it is well inside it in the 2017 analysis. In fact, it's the sister taxon of Deinonychus in the 2017 analysis.

The other is a "role reversal" concerning Adasaurus: well inside the subclade in the 2021 analysis, in fact
the sister taxon of Velociraptor; and well outside the subclade in the 2017 analysis.

The "wild card" seems to be the inclusion of Kansaignathus in the 2021 tree. It is missing from both of
the earlier trees, possibly because it was being described for the first time in 2021.

> > > Your quest for a "true" tree
> > > is confusing to me. Trees are produced using data. DIfferent data, different trees.

If you hadn't left off the qualifier "to the best of our data", I think there would only have been confusion
in your mind as to what the phrase meant.

It means that as much data as possible would be taken into account in the scoring
of characters, etc. The "different data" available to the people programming to produce the "different trees"
could be brought together, and then the data would be carefully sifted for redundancies
and discrepancies in the setting up of the data matrices.

Doing this for the three analyses could be a rewarding project for someone with the right background in setting
these things up. All I can suggest is that the 2017 data matrix be compared with the 2021 matrix first, especially
focusing on the "wild card" to see what difference its removal could make in the 2021 tree and its addition
to the 2017 tree. I'd only suggest the two be compared to the 2015 tree after some of the discrepancies
had been ironed out.


> They're hypotheses, right?

Yes, cladistics is almost as much of an art as it is a science. You do the best you can with
all the relevant data. That's what Ockham's Razor is all about, you know: it isn't just using
the information you have at your fingertips, or go with the simplest of competing hypotheses.

In the end, there may still be differences of opinion as to the setting up of the matrices,
but once the respective matrices are published, the specialists in the area at least don't
have the problem of comparing completely different setups, as with the trees in that Wiki entry that I was talking about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae

> > > As far as paleontology goes, "truth" and certainty is only possessed by creationists and fools.

Yes, but without taking that qualifying "to the best of our data" into account, the above comments of yours are just GIGO.

For years, one of your favorite claims about the things I wrote was, "you are being unclear" or words to that effect.
Harshman is still at it in his reply to the post of mine to which you are replying.

Here you have gone to the opposite extreme: it's clear from what you wrote that you couldn't make head
nor tail of the qualifier that followed "true" and instead of asking about it, you simply ignored it.

> > > At some fine-grained level it's problematic to identify exact relationships between organisms that have been
> > > extinct for ten of millions of year, particularly from only morphological evidence.

Obviously! especially with the incomplete skeletons that almost every species is known to us by.
Plus, sometimes skeletons are so disarticulated, and some of the bones so broken up, that
mis-identifications are almost inevitable. But, as I said, we do the best we can with as much of
the data as we can scrape together.

> > Oops, that link no longer works. Try
> >
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7099077/pdf/41598_2020_Article_61480.pdf

> And scratch that, copy-paste error. Sorry

No problem. If you do find a link, I am very interested, more so than Harshman seems to be. I hope you
you encourage him to do what I suggested after you had done this post, since he seems to have turned a blind eye to it.

"Don't you ever want to get back in the business of publishing phylogenies?
This could be a good opportunity; you could be doing the field a big service.
And you are far better at THAT than I am, or could become in the foreseeable future;
I am too busy with my own mathematical research."

This refers to the kind of analysis I was suggesting above, now enriched by your contribution
of the 2021 information, for which I thank you.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

The following travesty by Harshman, and my response, should be compared with
my reply to Erik a bit over an hour ago, especially the end where I make a request of Erik to suggest
that Harshman carefully consider some advice to which he (Harshman) has turned a blind eye
below, that may result in Harshman being hired as a systematist if he does a good job of it.

On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 8:01:32 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> Sorry, but I can't respond to either of those two posts, as they consist
> almost entirely of accusatory bullshit.

Are you really this incapable of making absolutely elementary distinctions?
The former post of mine was devoid of fresh accusations, and you responded to the real accusations
that had been made a post earlier without this kind of scurrilous charge or this kind of asinine boycott.

If what you just wrote is sincere, then you are exhibiting a serious degree of paranoia.

Is the reason you have falsely accused me of paranoia hundreds of times
that you want to be able to exhibit REAL paranoia? That is what you are exhibiting
with respect to the first of the two posts. Are you counting on Oxyaena
pretending your hundreds of accusations were true, and trolling "Mote beam eye"
like she loves to do?

Don't try to attack me for bringing Oxyaena into this; you are aping
her with the false charge of "bullshit." As you probably know, she has deleted
many a carefully written and reasoned presentation by me and replaced
it with "[snip mindless bullshit]". You've snipped everything, and called it
"bullshit" when it is nothing of the sort.

That is also true of second post, accusatory though it most certainly was:
it is thoroughly deceitful to call it "bullshit." I justified my accusation of trolling twice over,
and if that doesn't satisfy you, I can do it several times MORE over.

But I suppose that would be counterproductive. What I said once to a relative of
mine probably applies to you:

"There is only one thing you hate more than being falsely accused,
and that is being truthfully accused."

> If you strip all that out and
> start talking about paleontology, I'll be glad to respond.

The punch line to a well known Aesop fable goes: "You didn't dance when I piped to you,
and it is too late for you to start dancing now."

But in your case it is a bit different: you didn't want to discuss paleontology, [1]
and it's too late to pretend [2] that you want to discuss it now.

[1] You kept preferring to badger me to read an article by Feduccia about which
you kept making allegations highly insulting to him, yet you refused to document them
again and again and again. A responsible adult would consider him/herself to
be bound by a sense of duty to back up such allegations, but behaving like a responsible
adult would cramp your style, wouldn't it?

[2] There was plenty of paleontology (also some cladistics, which you love) in plain sight
in a long paragraph I quoted from an article by Feduccia,
and I explicitly recommended that we discuss it, but you did nothing of the sort.
Instead, you indulged in a mindless broken record routine about the first sentence in the long paragraph.
I showed you in two ways how mindless it was, but that didn't stop you from continuing to
ignore the invitation to discuss the rest of the paragraph.

> There does seem to be a bit of paleontology buried in there, but the noise to
> signal ratio is just too high.

You've pulled this stunt dozens of times: finding yourself justly accused
of dishonesty or hypocrisy, or gross favoritism, or cowardice, you sometimes
cajoled, sometimes almost demanded that I return to posting on paleontology.

If you could magically eliminate the thousands of times you've indulged in deceitful, hypocritical,
etc. personal attacks over the last decade, that would produce a major improvement
of your signal to noise ratio. Magically eliminate also myriads of uses of cunning flamebait [the old
name for trolling of the sort that falls short of actual attack] and ...

Oh, what a change there'd be!
The world would see
A new Johnny Boy.
[sung to the tune of "Georgy Girl"]


Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

The 2021 paper was one of those now you see it, now you don't. Unfortunately, I missed
the chance to download the PDF. You could yourself, I imagine. The abstract:

"A new dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur, Kansaignathus sogdianus gen. et sp. nov., is described based on a dentary from the Yalovach Formation (Santonian) at Kansai locality in northern Fergana Valley (Tajikistan) collected by Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1963–1964. Dentary has 12 tooth alveoli and not downturned anterior end. There is a chin prominence. Dorsal margin is concave and ventral margin is convex. There are two rows of vascular foramina on the labial side and irregular intermediate foramina in the anterior part of a dentary. The interdental plates are not discernable. Kansaignathus is one of the most basal members of the subfamily Velociraptorinae. It fills the gap in the fossil record of the Velociraptorinae between the Early Cretaceous Deinonychus and more derived Campanian–Maastrichtian velociraptorines of Asia and North America."

In other words, a single bone. Do you think it sheds light on whatever point you've been
hinting at? Or do you think they're using this specimen to investigate a different point? I doubt
you're in a position to answer that question, based on your unfamiliarity with trees.

[John Harshman]

On 9/24/21 7:56 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Sorry, that was just more of the same. Let me know when you want to try
something different.

[Peter Nyikos]

When was the last time you started a thread on sci.bio.paleontology, Herr Doktor Kibitzer?

Peter Nyikos

[Daud Deden]

Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
Was it a biped with long boney tail and teethy jaws with protruding chin? Could ducks have then lost/shrunk the tail, teeth and chin bone when they adopted arboreal upright tensional perching with hind limb tendon locking, in parallel with pterosaurs, avians and hominoids?

Chins are found in species which habitually lift to drink water above the surface, humans and gibbons by scooping, and elephants by trunk-suction. Ducks have to lift their water-filled mouths vertically to drink, they can't drink it straight from the surface like a cat. They lack kansaignathus chins because they lost their dentition for weight-saving flight, like pterosaurs, while hominoids became flat-faced. Humans developed dense-boned chins only after becoming obligate orthograde striding ground bipedalists, no other hominids developed chins. Kansaignathus sogdianas SHOULD HAVE NO CHIN PROMINENCE unless it lifted water above surface level during drinking.

Thoughts?

DD
-

[John Harshman]

On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?

No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
derive from different non-avian theropods.

[Daud Deden]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:05:08 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> > Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
> No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
> derive from different non-avian theropods.

That does not answer my question, afaict.

Is it at all possible (consider *ALL* possible scenarios, no matter how nonparsimonious iyo) that K. sogdianus was genetically a direct predecessor of modern ducks? (Phylogenetics be damned)

[erik simpson]

Unless phylogentic indications are spectacularly wrong, no, it's not even a stem duck. Its placement
amoung dromaeosaurids might move around if more of the skeleton were known, and it might not
even be a dromaeosaurid at all (although I defer to the judgement of authors in that regard).

[Daud Deden]

No, I know it was not a duck, a stem duck or a root duck. But could the bone have come from an ancient reptile ancestor of ducks, long before anything duck-like was alive?

Its placement
> amoung dromaeosaurids might move around if more of the skeleton were known, and it might not
> even be a dromaeosaurid at all (although I defer to the judgement of authors in that regard).

So we don't know.

[John Harshman]

On 10/8/21 9:13 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:05:08 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
>>> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
>> No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
>> derive from different non-avian theropods.
>
> That does not answer my question, afaict.

You're wrong about that.

> Is it at all possible (consider *ALL* possible scenarios, no matter how nonparsimonious iyo) that K. sogdianus was genetically a direct predecessor of modern ducks? (Phylogenetics be damned)

I'm unable to interpret that. Of course if you consider all possible
scenarios, anything could be true. Ducks could be directly descended
from walruses or dragonflies. There are no limits. But why should we
consider absurdly unparsimonious hypotheses?

[John Harshman]

No. Again, ducks do not have separate ancestry from other birds. The
sister group of ducks is screamers. The sister group of ducks and
screamers is galliforms. The sister group of ducks, screamers, and
galliformes is Neoaves. The sister group of ducks, screamers,
galliforms, and Neoaves is Paleognathae. And all these are nested within
various additional clades of birds. The fossil in question can't be
ancestral to ducks unless it's ancestral to all modern birds.

> Its placement
>> amoung dromaeosaurids might move around if more of the skeleton were known, and it might not
>> even be a dromaeosaurid at all (although I defer to the judgement of authors in that regard).
> So we don't know.
>

Don't be confused about what we do or don't know. We may not know just
what that fossil is, but we know much about what it isn't. It isn't a
mammal. It isn't a fish. And it isn't a duck ancestor.

[Daud Deden]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 9:23:21 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/8/21 9:13 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:05:08 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> >>> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
> >> No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
> >> derive from different non-avian theropods.
> >
> > That does not answer my question, afaict.
> You're wrong about that.
> > Is it at all possible (consider *ALL* possible scenarios, no matter how nonparsimonious iyo) that K. sogdianus was genetically a direct predecessor of modern ducks? (Phylogenetics be damned)
> I'm unable to interpret that. Of course if you consider all possible
> scenarios, anything could be true. Ducks could be directly descended
> from walruses or dragonflies. There are no limits. But why should we
> consider absurdly unparsimonious hypotheses?

In part because the evidence is so limited, one dentary. In part because it contains a chin prominence which is very rare in modern animals afaict, though I don't know if rare in dinosaurs.

[John Harshman]

On 10/9/21 9:21 AM, Daud Deden wrote:
> On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 9:23:21 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 10/8/21 9:13 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
>>> On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:05:08 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
>>>>> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
>>>> No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
>>>> derive from different non-avian theropods.
>>>
>>> That does not answer my question, afaict.
>> You're wrong about that.
>>> Is it at all possible (consider *ALL* possible scenarios, no matter how nonparsimonious iyo) that K. sogdianus was genetically a direct predecessor of modern ducks? (Phylogenetics be damned)
>> I'm unable to interpret that. Of course if you consider all possible
>> scenarios, anything could be true. Ducks could be directly descended
>> from walruses or dragonflies. There are no limits. But why should we
>> consider absurdly unparsimonious hypotheses?
>
>
> In part because the evidence is so limited, one dentary. In part because it contains a chin prominence which is very rare in modern animals afaict, though I don't know if rare in dinosaurs.

One dentary is enough to distinguish a galloanserine from a non-avian
theropod. You still seem to think that if we don't know everything we
therefore know nothing. You are wrong.

[Daud Deden]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 9:31:03 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/8/21 9:55 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:35:28 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> >> On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 8:41:01 PM UTC-7, daud....@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
> >>> Was it a biped with long boney tail and teethy jaws with protruding chin? Could ducks have then lost/shrunk the tail, teeth and chin bone when they adopted arboreal upright tensional perching with hind limb tendon locking, in parallel with pterosaurs, avians and hominoids?
> >>>
> >>> Chins are found in species which habitually lift to drink water above the surface, humans and gibbons by scooping, and elephants by trunk-suction. Ducks have to lift their water-filled mouths vertically to drink, they can't drink it straight from the surface like a cat. They lack kansaignathus chins because they lost their dentition for weight-saving flight, like pterosaurs, while hominoids became flat-faced. Humans developed dense-boned chins only after becoming obligate orthograde striding ground bipedalists, no other hominids developed chins. Kansaignathus sogdianas SHOULD HAVE NO CHIN PROMINENCE unless it lifted water above surface level during drinking.
> >>>
> >>> Thoughts?
> >>>
> >>> DD
> >>> -
> >>>> The 2021 paper was one of those now you see it, now you don't. Unfortunately, I missed
> >>>> the chance to download the PDF. You could yourself, I imagine. The abstract:
> >>>>
> >>>> "A new dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur, Kansaignathus sogdianus gen. et sp. nov., is described based on a dentary from the Yalovach Formation (Santonian) at Kansai locality in northern Fergana Valley (Tajikistan) collected by Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1963–1964. Dentary has 12 tooth alveoli and not downturned anterior end. There is a chin prominence. Dorsal margin is concave and ventral margin is convex. There are two rows of vascular foramina on the labial side and irregular intermediate foramina in the anterior part of a dentary. The interdental plates are not discernable. Kansaignathus is one of the most basal members of the subfamily Velociraptorinae. It fills the gap in the fossil record of the Velociraptorinae between the Early Cretaceous Deinonychus and more derived Campanian–Maastrichtian velociraptorines of Asia and North America."
> >>>>
> >>>> In other words, a single bone. Do you think it sheds light on whatever point you've been
> >>>> hinting at? Or do you think they're using this specimen to investigate a different point? I doubt
> >>>> you're in a position to answer that question, based on your unfamiliarity with trees.
> >> Unless phylogentic indications are spectacularly wrong, no, it's not even a stem duck.
> >
> > No, I know it was not a duck, a stem duck or a root duck. But could the bone have come from an ancient reptile ancestor of ducks, long before anything duck-like was alive?
> No. Again, ducks do not have separate ancestry from other birds.

But that is not at issue. I'm specifying ducks only because I personally witnessed my muscovy duck drink water by lifting its head, I don't know if all birds do that, so I limited the question to ducks.

What is at issue is that ducks/birds might have descended from a reptile ancestor which had to lift its head (2" - 20"+) above the water surface in order to drink (like ducks have to).

Modern animals which have chins do this, modern animals that don't have chins do not typically do this (except ducks/birds which lost teeth and perhaps boney chin due to strong selection for aerodynamic lightening).

The
> sister group of ducks is screamers. The sister group of ducks and
> screamers is galliforms. The sister group of ducks, screamers, and
> galliformes is Neoaves. The sister group of ducks, screamers,
> galliforms, and Neoaves is Paleognathae. And all these are nested within
> various additional clades of birds. The fossil in question can't be
> ancestral to ducks unless it's ancestral to all modern birds.

No argument there. But did the LCA of all modern birds likely have a *very general resemblance* to today's waterfowl? Or did it look like a canary, an eagle, a moa, all very different from typical waterfowl?

(I recall mentioning my surprise when I noticed unexpected similarities in a pigeon and a mallard, which I had never even imagined before.)

> > Its placement
> >> amoung dromaeosaurids might move around if more of the skeleton were known, and it might not
> >> even be a dromaeosaurid at all (although I defer to the judgement of authors in that regard).
> > So we don't know.
> >
> Don't be confused about what we do or don't know. We may not know just
> what that fossil is, but we know much about what it isn't. It isn't a
> mammal. It isn't a fish.

Agree.

And it isn't a duck ancestor.

Palognathae ancestor?

[Daud Deden]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:38:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/9/21 9:21 AM, Daud Deden wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 9:23:21 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 10/8/21 9:13 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> >>> On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 12:05:08 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 10/8/21 8:41 PM, Daud Deden wrote:
> >>>>> Erik! Help! This theropod could possibly have been a genetic precursor to modern ducks?
> >>>> No. Birds are monophyletic. Ducks are birds. Different birds do not
> >>>> derive from different non-avian theropods.
> >>>
> >>> That does not answer my question, afaict.
> >> You're wrong about that.
> >>> Is it at all possible (consider *ALL* possible scenarios, no matter how nonparsimonious iyo) that K. sogdianus was genetically a direct predecessor of modern ducks? (Phylogenetics be damned)
> >> I'm unable to interpret that. Of course if you consider all possible
> >> scenarios, anything could be true. Ducks could be directly descended
> >> from walruses or dragonflies. There are no limits. But why should we
> >> consider absurdly unparsimonious hypotheses?
> >
> >
> > In part because the evidence is so limited, one dentary. In part because it contains a chin prominence which is very rare in modern animals afaict, though I don't know if rare in dinosaurs.
> One dentary is enough to distinguish a galloanserine from a non-avian
> theropod. You still seem to think that if we don't know everything we
> therefore know nothing. You are wrong.

Please see my clarification re, muscovy duck drinking.

[John Harshman]

Most birds have to lift their heads to drink, but I'm wondering if you
mean the same thing I do by that. There are a few exceptions. Pigeons,
if I recall. And sandgrouse? No, it's not a paleognath ancestor either;
again, birds are monophyletic, Neornithes is monophyletic, and so are
several groups in between. There is no room for this theropod jaw to be
ancestral to any group of birds separately, and of course it's unlikely
to be the ancestor of anything.

[Daud Deden]

https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2010/07/09/anatomy-how-birds-drink/
Doves & pigeons can drink with beak lowered. Nectarivores can too. Sandgrouse lift but do not tilt back their heads while drinking.
Do all long-necked avians (eg. waterfowl, ostriches) lift water above the surface to drink?
Did all long-necked dinosaurs lift water and tilt head before drinking?

No, it's not a paleognath ancestor either;
> again, birds are monophyletic, Neornithes is monophyletic, and so are
> several groups in between.

I don't know the latest proper technical name that includes all modern avians. But I meant to compare all living birds to the long-necked bipedal dinosaur.with the prominent chin.

There is no room for this theropod jaw to be
> ancestral to any group of birds separately, and of course it's unlikely
> to be the ancestor of anything.

The jury is still out on that claim, imo.

[John Harshman]

What do you mean by "long-necked"? Almost all birds do it. We don't know
about the behavior of extinct species.

> No, it's not a paleognath ancestor either;
>> again, birds are monophyletic, Neornithes is monophyletic, and so are
>> several groups in between.
>
> I don't know the latest proper technical name that includes all modern avians. But I meant to compare all living birds to the long-necked bipedal dinosaur.with the prominent chin.

The term is either Neornithes or Aves, depending on who's talking.

> There is no room for this theropod jaw to be
>> ancestral to any group of birds separately, and of course it's unlikely
>> to be the ancestor of anything.
>
> The jury is still out on that claim, imo.

Your opinion, I'm afraid, is not informed.

[Daud Deden]

I meant 'a chin prominence'.

> The term is either Neornithes or Aves, depending on who's talking.
> > There is no room for this theropod jaw to be
> >> ancestral to any group of birds separately, and of course it's unlikely
> >> to be the ancestor of anything.
> >
> > The jury is still out on that claim, imo.
> Your opinion, I'm afraid, is not informed.

I don't think this one is either, despite the name: eagle-nosed shovel-chinned duck-billed dinosaur, found where I went on a Rio Grande river expedition in '79.
https://www.livescience.com/65937-shovel-chinned-dinosaur.html aquilarhinus palimentum

Dilophosaurus had a chin but not a (human-like) mental protuberance: "The dentary bone (the front part of the mandible where most of the teeth there were attached) had an up-curved rather than pointed chin. The chin had a large foramen at the tip, and a row of small foramina ran in rough parallel with the upper edge of the dentary". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilophosaurus

Dinosaurs don't seem to have had chins comparable to elephants, some hylobatids & humans.

[erik simpson]

Most if not all dinosaurs (including birds) didn't and don't closely resemble elephants, hylobatids or humans.
What are you trying to get at? Given the length of time separating "us" (synapsids) from "them" (diapsids) it
might be more surprising that they resemble us as much as they do. At least one now-departed eccentric saw
deep connections between ankylosaurs and armadillos.

[Daud Deden]

When I think of a chin, I think of a protruding boney human-like chin. The dinosaurs I mentioned were said to have chins, (thus inciting my questions) but they appear rather chinless to me. Where they used 'chin', I'd use mandible (afferent).

Given the length of time separating "us" (synapsids) from "them" (diapsids) it
> might be more surprising that they resemble us as much as they do. At least one now-departed eccentric saw
> deep connections between ankylosaurs and armadillos.

Yes. Thanks.

[Oxyaena]

On 9/24/2021 10:56 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip idiocy]

>
>
> On Friday, September 24, 2021 at 8:01:32 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>
>> Sorry, but I can't respond to either of those two posts, as they consist
>> almost entirely of accusatory bullshit.
>
> Are you really this incapable of making absolutely elementary distinctions?

He made a pretty accurate distinction. Almost everything you say
nowadays is accusatory bullshit.

> The former post of mine was devoid of fresh accusations, and you responded to the real accusations
> that had been made a post earlier without this kind of scurrilous charge or this kind of asinine boycott.

"Fresh accusations?" Man you're dense. Oh, and you're one to speak about
"asinine boycotts," jackass.

>
> If what you just wrote is sincere, then you are exhibiting a serious degree of paranoia.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."

>
> Is the reason you have falsely accused me of paranoia hundreds of times
> that you want to be able to exhibit REAL paranoia? That is what you are exhibiting
> with respect to the first of the two posts. Are you counting on Oxyaena
> pretending your hundreds of accusations were true, and trolling "Mote beam eye"
> like she loves to do?

I have nothing to do with this. Why must you insist on providing
gratuitous references to irrelevant third parties?

[snip idiocy]

>
>> There does seem to be a bit of paleontology buried in there, but the noise to
>> signal ratio is just too high.
>
> You've pulled this stunt dozens of times: finding yourself justly accused
> of dishonesty or hypocrisy, or gross favoritism, or cowardice, you sometimes
> cajoled, sometimes almost demanded that I return to posting on paleontology.

Mote beam eye.

>
> If you could magically eliminate the thousands of times you've indulged in deceitful, hypocritical,
> etc. personal attacks over the last decade, that would produce a major improvement
> of your signal to noise ratio. Magically eliminate also myriads of uses of cunning flamebait [the old
> name for trolling of the sort that falls short of actual attack] and ...

Mote beam eye.

>
> Oh, what a change there'd be!
> The world would see
> A new Johnny Boy.
> [sung to the tune of "Georgy Girl"]

Mote beam eye.

>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>