Talk:Shenzhouraptor

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Contents 1 Status of Jeholornis 2 Jeholornis and Shenzhouraptor 3 Shenzhouraptor 4 Impact of Jeholornis on the Paulian theory of post-volant dinosaurs 5 Shenzhoraptors, were believe it or not, raptors

[edit] Status of Jeholornis

According to Zhou & Zhang (2006), Jeholornis is the correct name for the bird known as Shenzhouraptor, since the paper in which it was published is a monthly journal (dated July 25, 2002). Thus, change the title of this article to Jeholornis.

The authors of Jeholornis have continually claimed that their name has priority. However almost every other source I can find argues that Shenzhouraptor has priority.Dinoguy2 22:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no scientific paper suggesting synonymy of Shenzhouraptor with Jeholornis. A paper may reveal the two genera to be distinct.

[edit] Jeholornis and Shenzhouraptor

Do you think that Shenzhouraptor and Jeholornis are distinct taxa? A cladistic analysis will show a synonymization of the two taxa to be unjustified. Stephen Czerkas is able to distinguish Jeholornis from Shenzhouraptor by its very small teeth and small size (Shenzhouraptor has no teeth and is three-quarters bigger than Jeholornis).

J. only has a few teeth in the tip of the lower jaw, a part that is missing in S.. Both lack teeth on the upper jaw completely. More complete specimens will probably show that J. and S. had the same number/pattern of teeth.

Again, they are most likely the same species, but there's not enough evidence to prove it definitively.Dinoguy2 17:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shenzhouraptor

I looked for the publication date in Ji, Ji, You, Zhang, Yuan, Ji, Li, & Li (2002) and found that the description of Shenzhouraptor was published in November 2002, four months after the publication of the description of Jeholornis. This means that Shenzhouraptor was published later than Jeholornis.

Ji, Q.; Ji, S.; You, H.; Zhang, J.; Yuan, C.; Ji, X.; Li, J. & Li, Y (2002): [Discovery of an avialae bird - Shenzhouraptor sinensis gen. et sp. nov - from China]. Geol. Bull. Chin. 21(7): 363-369 + 2 plates [in Chinese with English abstract]

Unfortunately, the publication date listed in the paper does not always reflect the actual date of publication. i know of at least one case in which a publication date seems to have been intentionally forged by the authors to help get their name priority.Dinoguy2 04:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Impact of Jeholornis on the Paulian theory of post-volant dinosaurs

In the page http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/metazoa/deuterostoma/chordata/archosauria/Urvogels/Avialae.htm, there is a sentence that reads, "Recently found Jeholornis further solidifies this link. It also shows for a first time a dromaeosaur-like stiffed tail on a bird, which further seems to indicate that Greg is right and that deinonychosaurs are non-volant dinobirds!" This sentence means the combination of a dromaeosaurid-like tail with a bird's body indicates that Gregory Paul's theory of post-volant dinosaurs is correct. 72.194.116.63 04:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC) Vahe Demirjian 20.22 8 March 2007

Wrong. It means the guy who wrote that web site interprets it that way. On my web site, I interpret Epidendrosaurus to mean that flight evolved from the trees down, and also agree with Greg Paul that many maniraptorans are post-volant. But I provide no original evidence or research to support my claim, I merely agree with a published hypotheses, and the fact that I, some guy on the Internet, agree with one hypothesis or another does not lend any kind of support to that hypothesis whatsoever.

What I'm saying is I agree with your statement, and apparently Mikko does too, but that means nothing unless it's in the context of a published study. Dinoguy2 05:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shenzhoraptors, were believe it or not, raptors

Therefore dinosaurs, saurichians,theropods and dromaesaurs. And even though I'm convinced all true raptors are more bird than reptile, wiki has all other pages on raptors having them as reptiles. So you don't have to tell me shenzhoraptors were birds becuase I know, it's just if I changed this page to say they're birds, I'd have to change every single other page about raptors on here, I don't have enough waste time. You know, just to save things like this happening, a new class of animal should be invented to put these creatures in, anyway, raptors arn't really birds or reptiles but a cross of the two, how about reptavians?

How do words get in the dictionary anyway? I seriously think we need a word like that to avoid such confusion. Scarlo-hara 14:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Since we're talking terminology, true raptors are indeed birds; they're birds of prey. Dinosaur raptors are a slang term for dromaeosaurids. Your beef is with Carl Linnaeus for coming up with an inflexible but popular and ingrained system, and for having the bad luck to predate Darwin and all of paleontology. In order to accommodate Linnaean ranks, bird articles are rolled over to Class Aves. Whether or not that was a good decision for Wikipedia to make is a question for the Tree of Life WikiProject.

Next, dromaeosaurids, as far as the great majority of researchers can tell, are not birds (unless you're Greg Paul). They're dinosaurs. Birds are also dinosaurs, not the same kind but a closely related kind. Proposing a new class would require a peer-reviewed scientific paper, but a new class is not necessary and would likely not be used by scientists because active researchers are abandoning ranked hierarchies (because of issues just like this). Dromaeosaurids are certainly not a cross between two groups; this implies that they are hybrids, when in reality they're just dinosaurs that are similar to but not quite birds. J. Spencer 15:03, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The other problem is that Shenzhouraptor, despite having raptor in its name, is not a dromaeosaurid. It's a true bird. "Raptor" does not equal dromaeosaur. Just look at Rapator, Sinraptor, Megaraptor, etc. It's a general suffix used for predators, like -venator. Dinoguy2 23:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)