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Untangling the dinosaur family tree

Nature volume 551, pages E1–E3 (2017)Cite this article

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arising from M. G. Baron et al. Nature 543, 501–506 (2017); doi:10.1038/nature21700

For over a century, the standard classification scheme has split dinosaurs into two fundamental groups1: ‘lizard-hipped’ saurischians (including meat-eating theropods and long-necked sauropodomorphs) and ‘bird-hipped’ ornithischians (including a variety of herbivorous species)2,3,4. In a recent paper, Baron et al.5 challenged this paradigm with a new phylogenetic analysis that places theropods and ornithischians together in a group called Ornithoscelida, to the exclusion of sauropodomorphs, and used their phylogeny to argue that dinosaurs may have originated in northern Pangaea, not in the southern part of the supercontinent, as has more commonly been considered6,7. Here we evaluate and reanalyse the morphological dataset underpinning the proposal by Baron et al.5 and provide quantitative biogeographic analyses, which challenge the key results of their study by recovering a classical monophyletic Saurischia and a Gondwanan origin for dinosaurs. This shows that the Ornithoscelida hypothesis is not the final word, and that there is still great uncertainty around the basic structure of the dinosaur family tree. There is a Reply to this Comment by Baron, M. G. et al. Nature 551, 10.1038/nature24012 (2017).

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Figure 1: Results of the reanalysis of a revised dataset on early dinosaur relationships.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Ribeirão Preto, 14040-190, Brazil

    Max C. Langer & Blair W. McPhee

  2. Sección Paleontología de Vertebrados CONICET—Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”, Avenida Angel Gallardo 470, Buenos Aires, C1405DRJ, Argentina

    Martín D. Ezcurra

  3. Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Richard-Wagner-Straße 10, Munich, 80333, Germany

    Oliver W. M. Rauhut

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK

    Michael J. Benton

  5. ARAID—Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis, Avenida Sagunto s/n, Teruel, 44002, Spain

    Fabien Knoll

  6. School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Fabien Knoll

  7. Laboratorio de Anatomía Comparada y Evolución de los Vertebrados, CONICET—Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”, Avenida Angel Gallardo 470, Buenos Aires, C1405DRJ, Argentina

    Fernando E. Novas

  8. CONICET—Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, Avenida Fontana 140, Trelew, 9100, Argentina

    Diego Pol

  9. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Grant Institute, James Hutton Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3FE, UK

    Stephen L. Brusatte

Authors
  1. Max C. Langer
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  2. Martín D. Ezcurra
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  3. Oliver W. M. Rauhut
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  4. Michael J. Benton
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  5. Fabien Knoll
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  6. Blair W. McPhee
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  7. Fernando E. Novas
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  8. Diego Pol
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  9. Stephen L. Brusatte
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Contributions

M.C.L., M.D.E., O.W.M.R., M.J.B., B.W.M., F.E.N. and S.L.B. designed the project. M.C.L., M.D.E., O.W.M.R., M.J.B., F.K., B.W.M., F.E.N. and D.P. rescored the data matrix. M.D.E. and D.P. conducted the phylogenetic analyses. M.J.B., B.W.M. and D.P. conducted the biogeographic analyses. All authors discussed the data, wrote and approved the final manuscript (including the Supplementary Information).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Max C. Langer.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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This file contains Supplementary Text and Data, Supplementary Figures 1–17 and Supplementary References. (PDF 4121 kb)

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Langer, M., Ezcurra, M., Rauhut, O. et al. Untangling the dinosaur family tree. Nature 551, E1–E3 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24011

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