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"Cursed" Patagonian Theropod
Topic Started: Jul 13 2016, 11:06 PM (702 Views)
Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/07/13/scientists-find-new-two-fingered-dinosaur----and-curse/87025152/

Not only did a series of unfortunate events befall the expedition team, in the same way megaraptorids were tyrannosaurs with big hands trying to be carnosaurs, this new theropod, named Gualicho, was a carnosaur with slim legs and tiny, two fingered hands like a medium sized tyrannosaur.

It coexisted with Argentinosaurus, Mapusaurus and Aoniraptor in the Huincul Formation.

Discuss.
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BossMan, Jake
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Son of God

Maybe this is a new Clade of theropods, perhaps a false group of theropods that took on the form of Tyrannosaurs...
Pseudotyrannosauria anyone??
Edited by BossMan, Jake, Jul 13 2016, 11:13 PM.
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TheNotFakeDK
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200% Authentic

Well, going by the phylogenetic analyses in the paper, Gualicho and Deltadromeus are closely related to megaraptorans. In one dataset, they come out as the basal most neovenatorids, sister to Neovenator and Megaraptora, which are found as carcharodontosaurs, not tyrannosauroids.

The second dataset is from the juvenile Megaraptor skull paper, the one that found them as tyrannosauroids. However, in this analyses, Gualicho, Neovenator and Megaraptora are recovered as successive outgroupings of Coelurosauria, and not particularly close to Tyrannosauroidea.

They admit that the two very different results are caused by "significant differences in both taxon- and character sampling", and that "only a more comprehensive analysis beyond the scope of this description can resolve the disagreement". So IMO, the position of Gualicho as an allosauroid is up for debate, as well as the position of Deltadromeus and Megaraptora. Business as usual then for Megaraptora.

And the paper:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0157793



With all that said, I am very curious to see how Gualicho compares to Aoniraptor, if the material can be compared at all. The fact that both are described as having characteristics of Deltadromeus and are from the same formation makes me wonder if they potentially represent the same taxon. The Gualicho paper doesn't mention Aoniraptor or even cite the paper, so it doesn't seem like they got a chance to compare the two, which wouldn't surprise me given the two papers came out quite close together.

I doubt this is the last of Gualicho we'll be hearing about in the near future.

Edit: I suppose you could say that its phylogeny/taxonomy/etc. is cursed too.
Edited by TheNotFakeDK, Jul 13 2016, 11:44 PM.
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Incinerox
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I wonder why they actually didn't make any comparisons between Gualicho and Aoniraptor in the first place.

Given that the two latest theropods to come out of that area share common ground with an already ambiguous genus, wouldn't a comparison between those two and the two known members of the Bahariasauridae be the first thing you'd want to test?
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Even
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The Aoniraptor paper did mention something about an undescribed theropod looking similar to Bahariasaurus.. Wonder if it might be Gualicho?

And let it be recorded that Gualicho = "Nototyrannus"
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the dark phoenix
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Um...aren't megaraptors renouned for they're claws? Gualicho seems to be the black sheep if he is a megaraptor.

Also considering they put it in carnosauria and megaraptors are coelurosaurs... IDK why science tries to mess with our brains.
Edited by the dark phoenix, Jul 14 2016, 06:08 PM.
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Ignacio
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Why? Why that name? -.-
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Incinerox
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Gualicho is named for the Patagonian goddess that apparently put the excavation team through hell by, including but not limited to, flipping their truck upside.

But if you mean "Nototyrannus", that's already an informal name for an abelisauroid.
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Ignacio
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"Gualicho" is a term is some times used to refer to a curse here in Argentina. I just don't like the word :P (and i sure don't like it as a name for a dinosaur)
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