Cockx, Benton and Keating 2024 cherry pick the wrong taxa in their feather origin paper
Once again diving into the origin of feathers,
Cockx, Benton and Keating 2024 omit key taxa (Fig 1) and provide a new last common ancestor for pterosaurs and dinosaurs: armored Aetosaurus (Fig 2).
This is nothing new. For a shameless timeline of pterosaur origin studies, click here.
Figure 1. Portion of figure 1 in Cockx, Benton and Keating 2024 showing Aetosaurus and Rutiodon basal to pterosaurs and dinosaurs. The LRT refutes this hypothesis of interrelationship by the simple addition of many more taxa.
” data-medium-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/cockx-cladogram.jpg?w=146″ data-large-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/cockx-cladogram.jpg?w=499″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” class=”size-full wp-image-88584″ src=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/cockx-cladogram.jpg” alt=”Figure 1. Portion of figure 1 in Cockx, Benton and Keating 2024 showing Aetosaurus and Rutiodon basal to pterosaurs and dinosaurs. The LRT refutes this hypothesis of interrelationship by the simple addition of many more taxa. ” width=”584″ height=”1199″ />
Figure 1. Portion of figure 1 in Cockx, Benton and Keating 2024 showing Aetosaurus and Rutiodon basal to pterosaurs and dinosaurs. The LRT refutes this hypothesis of interrelationship by the simple addition of many more taxa.
By contrast,
the large reptile tree (LRT, 2324 taxa) refutes this cherry-picked hypothesis of interrelationships by including a much longer list to dinosaur and pterosaur outgroup taxa. In the LRT Aetosaurus (Fig 2) gives rise only to more aetosaurs. Dinosaurs and pterosaurs have other ancestors that share more traits with each clade. These were omitted from the Cockx, Benton and Keating study.
Welcome to the politics of paleontology, where the quest for answers takes a backseat to efforts to suppress the quest for answers.
Figure 3. Hemiprotosuhus image from Desojo and Ezccura 2016. Colors added. This taxon is derived from Ticinosuchus, basal to aetosaurs.
” data-medium-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/aetosaurus-ticinosuchus588.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/aetosaurus-ticinosuchus588.jpg?w=584″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” class=”size-full wp-image-40402″ src=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/aetosaurus-ticinosuchus588.jpg” alt=”Figure 3. Hemiprotosuhus image from Desojo and Ezccura 2016. Colors added. This taxon is derived from Ticinosuchus, basal to aetosaurs.” width=”584″ height=”572″ />
Figure 2 Aetosaurus to scale with related taxa, far from pterosaurs and dinosaurs.
Co-author Michael Benton is the author of current university textbooks.
So this puts current students of paleontology deeper into a current dark age. Very sad. That’s why the LRT is here: to provide a competing hypothesis of interrelationships.
Figure 1. A selection of phytosaurs (parasuchians).
” data-medium-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rutiodon588.jpg?w=272″ data-large-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rutiodon588.jpg?w=584″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” class=”size-full wp-image-3101″ src=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rutiodon588.jpg” alt=”A selection of phytosaurs (parasuchians).” width=”584″ height=”644″ />
Figure 3. A selection of phytosaurs (parasuchians). Cockx, Benton and Keating indicate these are pterosaur and dinosaur outgroup taxa. The LRT refutes this hypothesis by adding taxa sharing more traits with the two clades.
There is no more reason to waste time
with this preprint, given its reliance on a phylogenetic tree topology that omits so many key taxa that the understanding of feather and filament origins on dinosaurs and pterosaurs respectively is impossible. Armored aetosaurs, like Aetosaurus (Fig 2), and armored parasuchians, like Rutiodon (Fig 3), provide no clues to the origin of feathers.
See link below for a competing hypothesis on the origin of feathers.
References
Cockx P, Benton MJ and Keating JN 2024. Estimating ancestral states of complex characters: A case study on the evolution of feathers. bioRxiv preprint https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.23.609354; this version posted August 23, 2024.
Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2024/09/05/cockx-benton-and-keating-2024-cherry-pick-the-wrong-taxa-in-their-feather-origin-paper/
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