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Robust dinosaur phylogeny?

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Abstract

The Ankylosauria comprises two families of armoured dinosaurs (Nodosauridae and Ankylosauridae) that are best known from well-preserved specimens from the Cretaceous period. In their report on the skull of a new Jurassic ankylosaur, Gargoyleosaurus, Carpenter et al.1 presented a phylogenetic analysis of four terminal taxa, which yielded a tree with Gargoyleosaurus as the sister taxon of the Ankylosauridae. But the authors' claim that their tree is robust is undermined when their data and their tree are evaluated using numerical techniques.

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Figure 1: The three possible trees of ankylosaur relationships (rooted on Scelidosaurus with the basal polytomy unresolved).

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UG, UK

    Mark Wilkinson & Paul Upchurch

  2. Department of Zoology, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Mark Wilkinson

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, UK

    Paul M. Barrett

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK

    David J. Gower & Michael J. Benton

Authors
  1. Mark Wilkinson
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  2. Paul Upchurch
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  3. Paul M. Barrett
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  4. David J. Gower
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  5. Michael J. Benton
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Wilkinson, M., Upchurch, P., Barrett, P. et al. Robust dinosaur phylogeny?. Nature 396, 423–424 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/24763

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