Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeMisnumbered references for sauropod phylogenetic studies
Posted by MikeTaylor on 03 Jul 2009 at 10:39 GMT
According to page 47 of the PDF, "Recent titanosaur phylogenetic analyses were used to determine the phylogenetic position of D. matildae and W. wattsi [47,48]." However reference 47 is the description of a lizard, and 48 is on the origin of modern crocs. Can the authors please give the correct references for the titanosaur phylogeny studies? Thanks.
(By the way, to go off on a bit of a tangent, this is one of the reasons I hate numbered references so much: if the text just mentioned, say, Wilson 2002 and Upchurch et al. 2004, readers wouldn't even have to bother looking at the reference list, and numeric mismatches like these ones are impossible. Just saying.)
RE: Misnumbered references for sauropod phylogenetic studies
MikeTaylor replied to MikeTaylor on 03 Jul 2009 at 10:41 GMT
Oh, and I forgot to say: I just love the very comprehensive specimen photography in this paper. The variety of angles together with the ultra-high-resolution of the downloadable versions makes this one of the most useful of recent sauropod descriptions. (Apparently there is some kind of theropod involved too, but I didn't read that bit.)
RE: Misnumbered references for sauropod phylogenetic studies
Scott_Hocknull replied to MikeTaylor on 04 Jul 2009 at 09:35 GMT
My apologies for this oversight. The correct reference numbers are [47] = [37] and [48] = [38]. You will see the correct references to the first and second analyses in the sentence that follows.
Recent titanosaur phylogenetic analyses were used to determine the phylogenetic position of D. matildae and W. wattsi [47], [48]. These two analyses were chosen because they independently analyse a large number of basal and derived titanosaurs with two differing character sets and terminal taxa. We added Huanghetitan, Diamantinasaurus and Wintonotitan to the first analysis [37] and retained Alamosaurus and Nemegtosaurus in the final ingroup list (Cladistic Matrix S1). A single most-parsimonious tree was returned (TL = 325 steps; CI = 0.64; RI = 0.99). The second analysis [38] added Diamantinasaurus and Wintonotitan (Cladistic Matrix S2). A single most-parsimonious tree was returned (TL = 220 steps; CI = 0.58; RI = 0.93) for this analysis. Both analyses were bootstrapped, returning low values (<50%) for all derived nodes.
Regards,
Scott