Origins Conference 2022 part 1: McLain´s basal pterosaur analysis
Biology abstracts
https://coresci.org/jcts/index.php/jctsb/issue/view/31
https://coresci.org/jcts/index.php/jctsb/issue/view/31
Geology Abstracts
The annual Origins conference is one of the foremost creationist conferences involving multiple disciplines, primarily: biology, geology, and theology. In this series of posts, I will review the published works this year that I can comment on, unfortunately, I cannot comment on most of what occurred since it is simply outside of my field and I don´t understand it.
McLain M. 2022 ¨New Baraminological Analysis of “Basal” Pterosaurs Confirms Multiple Holobaramins¨
McLain analyzed a brand-new dataset of ´basal´ Pterosaurs by Yang et al. 2022 (286 characters and 41 taxa) using BARCLAY (Wood 2020b). Previous analyses (McLain 2021) were inconclusive regarding the state of holobaramins, except the family Anurognathidae showing the possibility of it being a holobramin. The new analysis showed the possibility of four holobaramins within the ´basal´ pterosauria. McLain used a character cutoff of 0.75 in his analysis preserved 174/286 characters and all 41 taxa. Four outgroup non-pterosaur taxa were retained (Euparkaria, Ornithosuchus, Herrerasaurus, and Scleromochlus). The taxa studied were:
¨26 nonpterodactyloid pterosaurs (five Triassic pterosaurs, Dimorphodon, two Campylognathoides species, six rhamphorhynchids, three wukongopterids, and nine anurognathids); and 11 pterodactyloids (six archaeopterodactyloids and five ornithocheiroids (both sensu Kellner 2003)).¨
The dataset was analyzed with BDC (with Pearson correlation coefficients) with the corresponding MDS, the software used can be found here: https://coresci.org/barclay.
The dataset used for this analysis, unfortunately, is not open-access, so I was not able to see the dataset, nor actually read the article, but I was able to find the phylogeny online.
The BDC yielded interesting results, four major blocks of positive correlation, with some instances of positive correlation between groups, which is not surprising. McLain states,
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| Phylogeny from Yang et al. 2022 |
The BDC yielded interesting results, four major blocks of positive correlation, with some instances of positive correlation between groups, which is not surprising. McLain states,
¨There was a small block of ornithocheiroid pterodactyloids;
a large block of anurognathids, Triassic taxa, Campylognathoides,
and the non-pterosaur outgroup taxa; a smaller block of
archaeopterodactyloids and wukongopterids; and then the
rhamphorhynchids. There was no shared positive correlation
between the large block and any block containing pterodactyloids,
but there was positive correlation between the rhamphorhynchid
block and the archaeopterodactyloid + wukongopterid block. The
ornithocheiroid block only shared positive correlation with the
archaeopterodactyloid + wukongopterid block. The MDS similarly
showed four clusters, but with slightly different compositions:
1) Anurognathidae; 2) Monofenestrata; 3) Rhamphorhynchidae
+ Campylognathoides; 4) Outgroup, Triassic pterosaurs, and
Dimorphodon.¨
McLain then decided to remove the ornithocheiroid taxa from the analysis due to their distance ¨taxonomically and phylogenetically¨ from the other pterosaurs.
¨The results of this new BDC analysis
contained four blocks of positive correlation: 1) Anurognathidae;
2) Triassic taxa + Dimorphodon + Campylognathoides +
outgroup; 3) Archaeopterodactyloidea + Wukongopteridae;
and 4) Rhamphorhynchidae. There were very few examples of
shared positive correlation between these four blocks (except
Rhamphorhynchidae with blocks 2 and 3). The MDS results
showed the same four clusters as in the BDC with the anurognathids
tightly clustered and farthest from the rest of the taxa.¨
From this newer analysis, it seems that anurognathidae is a very well-defined group. The analysis also showed four possible holobaramins of non-pterodactyloids with Dimorphodon kinda doing its own thing. Two sub-analyses were also conducted to clarify the status of Archaeopterodactyloidea +
Wukongopteridae and Rhamphorynchidae with the rest of the Triassic pterosaurs, but ultimately concluded that the holobaraminic status of Archaeopterodactyloidea and Wukongopteridae is uncertain. McLain also concluded that Rhamphorhynchidae and Anurognathidae have the most support for the status of holobaramin.
Now, I must admit, I had to do a lot of copying and pasting of the names of the groups because they´re pretty complicated to write. Also, I admit, my knowledge on pterosaurs is pretty superficial, I know some stuff, but its similar to my knowledge of Pleistocene mammals, which isn´t much. Thus, I don´t have much commentary on this work, other than to say more investigation is definitely needed. Matt did mention during his presentation that this analysis was particularly annoying since it did not include some pretty important pterosaur taxa that would have shed some more light on this issue. If you´ve done baraminology work, you know how frustrating it is to have missing taxa. Extending a dataset is one solution, but doing so is also laborious since most of the time baraminologists don´t have access to specimens of interest. All that to say, more taxa may clarify the status of Archaeopterodactyloidea and Wukongopteridae. Obviously.
Now, I must admit, I had to do a lot of copying and pasting of the names of the groups because they´re pretty complicated to write. Also, I admit, my knowledge on pterosaurs is pretty superficial, I know some stuff, but its similar to my knowledge of Pleistocene mammals, which isn´t much. Thus, I don´t have much commentary on this work, other than to say more investigation is definitely needed. Matt did mention during his presentation that this analysis was particularly annoying since it did not include some pretty important pterosaur taxa that would have shed some more light on this issue. If you´ve done baraminology work, you know how frustrating it is to have missing taxa. Extending a dataset is one solution, but doing so is also laborious since most of the time baraminologists don´t have access to specimens of interest. All that to say, more taxa may clarify the status of Archaeopterodactyloidea and Wukongopteridae. Obviously.
References
McLain, M.A. 2022. New Baraminological Analysis of “Basal” Pterosaurs Confirms Multiple Holobaramins. Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences 12:7-8.
Zixiao Yang, Michael J. Benton, David W. E. Hone, Xing Xu, Maria E. McNamara, and Baoyu Jiang "Allometric Analysis Sheds Light on the Systematics and Ontogeny of Anurognathid Pterosaurs," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 41(5), (13 May 2022). https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2021.2028796
Wood, Todd Charles. 2020b. “Expanding the Toolkit of Statistical Baraminology with BARCLAY: Baraminology and Cluster Analysis.” Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences 10 (22 July): 7.
McLain, M.A. 2021. Baraminology of non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs reveals evidence of multiple created kinds. Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences 11:5-6.
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