PONE-D-21-14221

Postcranial osteology of  Beipiaosaurus inexpectus (Theropoda: Therizinosauria)

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Liao,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear authors,

indeed this is a very important manuscript due to the circumstance, that the description of the postcranial material of Beipiaosaurus inexpectus still was never published in the global community. The descriptive part of the manuscript is very informative and fits perfectly to the pictures. The coloration of the bones within the photographs sometimes helps, but sometimes leads to a very unnatural appearance of the image. Altogether a very interesting paper!

Reviewer #2: This is a solid paper, and a welcome addition to previously published information on Beipiaosaurus inexpectus. The osteological descriptions are generally good and the images are very helpful (recoloring the bones to highlight their morphology was a good idea).

The authors also provide a lot of contextual/comparative information and highlight areas of uncertainty (i.e. identity of carpals), so I do not have any major complaints or comments regarding the scientific merits of the paper.

The text needs a serious polish in terms of wording, grammar etc. but that should only take a couple of hours, so "minor revisions". I have highlighted some examples below:

I would reword some sentences in the abstract, for example:

Beipiaosaurus inexpectus, from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Sihetun Locality near Beipiao

"Locality" should be lower case, and "from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation (Sihetun locality, near Beipiao)" sounds better.

Page 3, lines 56, 61: "disentangle" would be a better word here.

Page 3, line 63: Is pygostyle supposed to be in quotation marks here?

Page 3, line 64: this should probably read "a unique type of feathers"

Page 3, line 65: Repetition of "of the"

In Table 1 (vertebral measurements), please use "vertebrae" (i.e., cervical vertebrae) because you are including measurements for several vertebrae.

Page 9, line 165 - this needs fixing: "there is a web of bone connected the two parts called intrapostzygapophyseal lamina

Page 11, line 212 - this needs fixing: "The well-developed lamina and fossa system is also a feature can be seen"

Page 11, line 223 - missing space: "heightas"

Page 12, line 237-239: missing parenthesis

Page 12, line 249: This should read "The last three sacrals"

Page 12, line 254: This should read subrectangular

Page 14, line 296 and throughout that paragraph: This should be the plural form (postzygapophyses)

Page 14, line 301: "most crushed"? Needs fixing.

Page 15, line 314: caudal series (not caudals series)

Table 2 - please check and fix the wording (e.g., "some midshaft might lost")

Page 17, line 335: remove "in"

Page 17, lines 338-340: reword this last sentence.

Page 17, line 341: repetition of "~"

Page 17, line 346: missing space

Page 18, line 362: this should read "similar to those"

Page 18, line 370: Should read "the glenoid"

Page 19, not sure about the use of "enhanced" here: "This feature may be enhanced by or entirely the result of crushing"

Page 21, line 436-438: Should read "the humeral head"

Page 21, line 442: Separate the words

Page 21, line 453: Should read "the humerus"

Page 22, line 476: This should read "There is a prominent..."

Page 22, line 483: This should be the plural form of radius...

Page 23, line 507: This first sentence is not really complete.

Page 25, please rewrite: "In general, metacarpal elements of B. inexpectus is resemble to those of Falcarius [2]."

Page 30, please reword: "The ilium is parallelogram in shape"

Page 33, line 740: Prominent

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-14221_reviewer.pdf

Postcranial osteology of  Beipiaosaurus inexpectus (Theropoda: Therizinosauria)

PONE-D-21-14221R1

Dear Dr. Liao,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Ulrich Joger

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No