Re: [dinosaur] Gargantuavis pelvis from Maastrichtian of Romania (not ornithurine bird)

Amazing.  It'd be a shame if _Gargantuavis_ is ever sunk into _Elopteryx_.
Considering how fragmentary the _Elopteryx_ holotype is, this should
probably be a non-starter.

This sentence got me thinking: "Judging from the elongated shape of the
preserved caudal vertebrae, _Balaur_ had a long tail (Cau et al., 2015)
and, if avian, it is therefore outside Pygostylia, the clade including
short-tailed birds."

Pygostylia contains short-tailed birds - but there's no reason why it
should contain *only* short-tailed birds.

The length of the tail (and whether or not it es a pygostyle) does not
directly determine if _Balaur_ (or _Gargantuavis_ or _Elopteryx_) is a
member of Pygostylia or not.  Membership of this clade is not dependent on
whether the taxon has a pygostyle.  Pygostylia is node-based, and anchored
in _Confuciusornis_ (e.g., Turner et al., 2012; Hartman et al., 2019).   As
such, membership of Pygostylia depends on a taxon's phylogenetic position
relative to _Confuciusornis_ and crown birds, not on the presence of a
pygostyle.  Some topologies recover the long-tailed _Jeholornis_ inside
Pygostylia.  There's even a suggestion that _Balaur_ may be closely related
to the volant _Jinguofortis_, which has a pygostyle (
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__theropoda.blogspot.com_2018_09_balaur-2Dun-2Djinguofortisidae-2Dgigante.html&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=fzTla0s8USVFaSKLN3nCLVcPeEUlxBa5bBzVkBsrqWA&s=o6kJG5cjOaldqYdnhxmd2uNufirkxQR5_iTrWqOFaEI&e= )
I don't know how the putative _Balaur_-_Gargantuavis_-_Elopteryx_ clade
impacts on this hypothesis.

It's likely that the pygostyle evolved multiple times within avialan
theropods, making any apomorphy-based definition of Pygostylia
impractical.  In one way it's unfortunate that "Pygostylia" was chosen as a
clade, since the name tends to give the impression that a critter must have
a pygostyle in order to be a pygostylian.  _Balaur_ etc could theoretically
be a pygostylian (i.e. a member of Pygostylia) without a pygostyle.

On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 5:34 AM Ben Creisler <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Ben Creisler
> [email protected]
>
>
> A new paper:
>
>
> Gerald Mayr, Vlad Codrea, Alexandru Solomon, Marian Bordeianu & Thierry
> Smith (2019)
> A well-preserved pelvis from the Maastrichtian of Romania suggests that
> the enigmatic Gargantuavis is neither an ornithurine bird nor an insular
> endemic.
> Cretaceous Research (advance online publication)
> doi: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1016_j.cretres.2019.104271&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=fzTla0s8USVFaSKLN3nCLVcPeEUlxBa5bBzVkBsrqWA&s=b1Pa5DXFjGR65uWAsyCCJlpk4NdjL3krmwT8A52qULU&e= 
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1016_j.cretres.2019.104271&d=DwMFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=PPzr9-8H3_VPv7hS6V7F8Ah-Zm3FWeN1nEoSHA12YSY&s=Z86-aQJtRdtPNWyd4J0R7Bb0UqRuikMv7r-ALsjEIJY&e=>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedirect.com_science_article_pii_S0195667119302289&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=fzTla0s8USVFaSKLN3nCLVcPeEUlxBa5bBzVkBsrqWA&s=voMk7j2HyniENGlb6cawDRjo5s9GGjRAbrzVh3eiWd0&e= 
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedirect.com_science_article_pii_S0195667119302289&d=DwMFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=PPzr9-8H3_VPv7hS6V7F8Ah-Zm3FWeN1nEoSHA12YSY&s=gxSV9shVMUiu8eGScg_ibw-7R0U4IN3qpNrdwq4Z9Y0&e=>
>
>
> We describe a well-preserved pelvis from the Maastrichtian Sânpetru
> Formation of the Haţeg Basin in Romania. The fossil closely resembles the
> pelvis of Gargantuavis philoinos from the Ibero-Armorican Peninsula, but
> differs in a smaller size and a few morphological features. It constitutes
> the first record of Gargantuavis outside the Ibero-Armorican Island and is
> more complete than any of the previously known Gargantuavis pelves. The new
> fossil allows the recognition of characteristics previously unknown for
> Gargantuavis. These include the presence of large supratrochanteric
> processes, the absence of a widened midsection of the synsacrum (which
> indicates the absence of a glycogen body), and the absence of fusion
> between the pelvic bones at the level of the acetabulum. The latter two
> features suggest that Gargantuavis is not closely related to the Ornithurae
> and the taxon may even fall outside the Ornithothoraces, the clade
> including Enantiornithes and Ornithuromorpha. Recognition of Gargantuavis
> in the fauna of the Haţeg Island is of particular significance, because
> various theropods have been described from the Upper Cretaceous of Romania.
> The Romanian pelvis is of similar-size to Elopteryx nopcsai, which was
> described as avian and is based on hindlimb elements, and it also shows
> some similarities to the pelvis of the unusual theropod Balaur bondoc. The
> new fossil furthermore disproves the hypothesis that the flight
> capabilities of Gargantuavis were lost in an insular environment of the
> Ibero-Armorican Island, and raises the possibility that Gargantuavis,
> Elopteryx, and Balaur belong to a distinctive theropod clade of the Late
> Cretaceous European archipelago.
>
>
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