Limusaurus and Bird Digit Identity

For those of you who may have missed this or are not subscribed to the Dinosaur Mailing List, this is a comment left for my recent post on Limusaurus, the strange new beaked ceratosaur from China. One of the purported significances of this specimen is that it shed light on the debate on dinosaur digit homologies. As you can see below, this new article is a response to that claim.

A. Vargas has left a new comment on your post "Limusaurus inextricabilis, a Bizarre Beaked Cerato...":

Vargas, AO, Wagner GP, and Gauthier, JA. Limusaurus and bird digit identity.

hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.3828.1

Here is our response to the Limusaurus paper. It was recently rejected by nature, not for any technical reason but because it was considered not to be of sufficient interest/importance.
We have uploaded it at the nature precedings citable archive, because we think it is important there is a quick and citable reply that unlike Xu’s proposal, is consistent with the view of the larger community of theropod paleontologists, namely, that tetanuran digits still are I, II, III. We are preparing a longer paper on this topic.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, that's what I've been saying. When you look at other ceratosaur hands, it makes far more sense for Limusaurus' bizarre hand to have evolved in that context rather than as some precurser to the avian condition.

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