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Baron et al. reply

Nature volume 551, pages E4–E5 (2017)Cite this article

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REPLYING TO M. C. Langer et al. Nature 551, 10.1038/nature24011 (2017)

We applaud Langer et al.2 for presenting their rigorous analysis of early dinosaur palaeobiogeography, which uses both our new tree and their expanded version of our dataset. This work was beyond the scope of our original study and we limited our comments on palaeobiogeography to a single sentence of speculation in the discussion: it is pleasing to see our new tree being used for broader macro-evolutionary studies. We concur with the results presented by Langer et al.2, but note that Northern Hemisphere taxa are underrepresented in these trees due to a paucity of material and localities, although fragmentary evidence indicates the presence of silesaurids, herrerasaurids and other early dinosaur taxa in these faunas7. Our intention was to indicate that we should not rely on the southern Pangaean record alone when attempting to reconstruct dinosaur evolutionary history5,6,8, and to suggest that northern Pangaea might prove important in unravelling the early evolutionary history of avemetatarsalians, as has also been suggested by other recent discoveries9.

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Figure 1: Results of the phylogenetic analysis of the dataset following the re-scoring of Pisanosaurus mertii.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, UK

    Matthew G. Baron & David B. Norman

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Matthew G. Baron & Paul M. Barrett

Authors
  1. Matthew G. Baron
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  2. David B. Norman
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  3. Paul M. Barrett
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Correspondence to Matthew G. Baron.

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Baron, M., Norman, D. & Barrett, P. Baron et al. reply. Nature 551, E4–E5 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24012

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