On Monday, September 13, 2021 at 3:04:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/13/21 11:39 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > My bad. For some reason I thought both posts that appeared below my last one
> > were by Oxyaena. Now I see that one was by you, John, and from Oxyaena's
> > reply to my first reply, it seems she is at least as clueless about Nazism as you are.
> >
> > Rather than dwell on this theme with you, I take this opportunity to switch to some on-topic discussion,
> > and to make it more attractive to you, I will focus on systematics.
> >
> > On Monday, September 13, 2021 at 10:46:07 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/13/21 6:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Friday, September 10, 2021 at 11:57:10 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> >>>> On Friday, September 10, 2021 at 6:57:32 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> >>>>> allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> >>>>> (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> >>>>> In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> >>>>> were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> >>>>> https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> >>>>> carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "What caught scientists by surprise was that the dinosaur was much larger — twice the length and more than five times heavier — than its ecosystem's previously known apex predator: a tyrannosaur, the researchers found."
> >
> > If you look at the illustrations, you can see that it is a relatively small fragment of the upper jaw,
> > making me wonder how they got it so neatly into the phylogeny and thus were able
> > to extrapolate from known specimens.
> >
> > And I wonder how well they took into account the principle that as an organism evolves
> > to a much greater size, some parts of the anatomy increase more than others.
> > There were some pretty careless estimates made just from the sizes of various
> > teeth in homininae, and it might have actually come as a surprise to some paleontologists
> > to learn that *Gigantopithecus* really was the size one would expect from its huge molars.
> >
> >
> >
> >>> I'm pretty sure that the word the authors were looking for is "impacted."
> >> I think they mean "implanted", likely a new tooth that was yet to emerge
> >> from the jaw.
> >
> > Did you study the illustrations to see whether this is what they meant?
> >
> > By the way, do you have some grounds for thinking "implanted" is a synonym for "unerupted"?

> It seems clear that's what they meant, as it was exposed only because of
> a break in the maxilla.

You are evading the question. Are you afraid to say that the authors may have been guilty
of a malapropism?

> I see you have located the actual paper,
> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809

I see you didn't notice that I included it in the OP. Did I make it too boring for you to read
it without getting sleepy?

> > Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
> > you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
> > in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
> >
> > "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
> > software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
> > analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
> > Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
> > unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
> > [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
> > characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
> > 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
> > replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
> > reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
> > were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
> > https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]
> >
> > What does "were treated as ordered" mean?

> A multistate character can be either ordered or unordered. If unordered,
> going from one state to any other takes one step. If ordered, going from
> state 1 to state 3 requires two steps, etc.

Ah, like state 1 feathers (dinofuzz, optimistically called protofeathers), state 2 feathers,
state 3 feathers [barbs but no barbules, as in kiwis], state 4 feathers, and state 5 asymmetric flight remiges?

But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?

> > The section continued with:
> >
> > "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> > Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> > Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
> >
> > How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> > or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?

> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;

Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
of them without being that subset itself.

> these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
> are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
> It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
> all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.

> > "Neovenatoridae
> > was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
> > small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
> > phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
> > Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
> > Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
> > polytomy (figure 3b).
> >
> > Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
> > in their stride by your favorite systematists?

> Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
> them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
> ought to look at that. Of course only the maxillary characters are known
> for the focal taxon, so maybe they didn't feel like going to the trouble.

> > "Carcharodontosauria is supported by 18 synapomorphies, including two characters
> > of the maxilla (i.e. fused posterior paradental plates and approximately 20° ventral orientation at the jugal
> > contact). A major difference in the results of these two phylogenetic analyses is that Megaraptora is placed
> > within Carcharodontosauria and Tyrannosauroidea in the first and second analyses, respectively.
> > Our results are consistent with the results of the original analyses where Megaraptora is placed in
> > Allosauroidea by Carrano et al. [42] but in Tyrannosauroidea by Porfiri et al. [43].
> >
> > Good grief! IIRC allosaurs are in Carnosauria and tyrannosaurs in Coelurosauria, two giant separate
> > clades.
> >
> > If this is the unsatisfactory status of Megaraptora, can we be sure Maniraptora is safely ensconced
> > in Coelurosauria?

> You would have to consult the original analyses, the ones cited in this
> paper.

It looks like you misunderstood my question, and are still optimistic about being
able to correct either both [42] and one of the analyses, or both [43] and the other.

Or did you misunderstand the paragraph which elicited "Good grief!" from me, now without
the accidental blank line that appeared in the post to which you were replying?

>And you would need to argue about the homology assignments of the
> various characters. But I think we can be sure.

Are you sure you think you are sure about the same thing that I asked you about us being sure of?

[A nice sentence for "The Princess Bride II", don't you think?]

> > If not, Feduccia will probably gain some new disciples to replace any that drop
> > away due to death, or whatever.

No reaction from you on this, perhaps because you misunderstood either my question
or the part of Section 4 immediately preceding it.

> >
> > The following sentence concludes Section 4, which I have thus quoted in its
> > entirety, putting comments exactly where they are most effective.
> >
> > "Based on both of our
> > phylogenetic analyses, however, it is evident that Ulughbegsaurus is assignable to the Carcharodontosauria."

> And that's really all they were trying to do. They were unconcerned with
> where carcharodonts actually go.

Are you concerned about where Megaraptora fit now? Or do you still not understand
why I said what I did about Feduccia?

> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >
> > PS The aforementioned insertion feature, far more easily done on Usenet
> > than in most other forums, is a boon to people who are trying to get at
> > the truth of things, and a bane to everyone whose primary objective is to make
> > it look like they have the upper hand in a debate, by hook or crook.

> What aforementioned insertion feature?

"putting comments exactly where they are most effective."

> Who are you talking about?

Nobody in particular. I am talking about contrasts in people's attitudes. Let me add that a lot of
the people to whom it is a baneful feature do care about the truth when conversing
with people with whom they have bonded, or are arguing with people who
are so inept, they can eat their truth cake and have their upper hand cake too,
without having to take advantage of this wonderful feature of Usenet.

>Was
> this an attack on me or on parties not present or what?

Why do you ask? Are you feeling paranoid?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos