The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

(Fig. 32). Zanno (2010) included a larger dataset though few Therizinosauria members included more than 50% of their characters. Because of this, all taxa were analyzed in order to retain a large enough number of therizinosaurs for analysis. Both PC 1 and PC 2 separated Therizinosauridae from the outgroups while locating them most closely to Oviraptorosauria. The non-therizinosaurid therizinosaurs ( Falcarius , Beipiaosaurus , and Alxasaurus) are placed in between the therizinosaurids and the alvarezsaurids. In contrast, dromaeosaurids and troodontids ordinate more distantly, and ornithomimosaurs form a series that is even farther away along PC 2 (Fig. 33). PC 3 separated therizinosaurs from the non- maniraptoran theropods and troodontids (Fig. 34). At the same time PC 3 does not distinguish dromaeosaurids, oviraptorosaurs, and therizinosaurs; all exhibit a broad range of spatial overlap. Maniraptoran groups show spatial intergradation though morphospatial distinctions are present. G. Maniraptora The BDC results for the Osmolska et al. (2004), Makovicky and Norell (2004), Norell and Makovicky (2004), and Padian (2004) combined data, found in Weishampel et al. (2004) for Oviraptorosauria, show two main blocks of positively correlated taxa separated by negative correlation: Oviraptorosauria and the outgroup taxa ( Archaeopteryx , Velociraptor , Herrerasaurus , and the hypothetical outgroup, Fig. 35). The oviraptorosaur Avimimus , however, does not correlate positively or negatively with any of the other taxa in the analysis. Classical MDS results show separation between Oviraptorosauria and the outgroup taxa (Fig. 36). For PCA, only taxa with at least 55% of character data were analyzed. PCA results likewise show space between Oviraptorosauria and the outgroup taxa. The only difference is that Caudipteryx is distant from all other groups (Fig. 37). The maniraptoran matrix of Foth and Rauhut (2017) contained both more taxa and more characters than the earlier oviraptorosaur dataset. The first analysis (Fig. 38) includes all maniraptorans, without respect to missing data, and again shows spatial distinction with overlapping group ranges reminiscent of the Zanno (2010) therizinosaurian analysis (Fig. 34). Four groups of taxa can be identified: 1) Dromaeosauridae, “basal” Avialae, and Doran et al. ◀ Dinosaur baraminology ▶ 2018 ICC 413 Figure 5 . BDC results for Langer’s (2004) data matrix of basal Saurischia, as calculated by BDISTMDS (relevance cutoff 0.9). Closed squares indicate significant, positive BDC; open circles indicate significant, negative BDC. Figure 6 . Three-dimensional classical MDS applied to Langer’s (2004) data matrix for “basal” Saurischia. Members of Sauropodomorpha are shown in gray, Eoraptor in orange, Herrerasaurus , Staurikosaurus , and the outgroup are dark orange, and Pisanosaurus and remaining Ornithischia are red. Scree plot suggests the first three dimensions represent most of the variance. Figure 7. Biplot of PCA scores (black) and vectors (gray) for Langer’s (2004) data matrix for basal Saurischia. PC 1 accounts for 37.9% of the variance and PC 2 accounts for 24.7% of the variance. Saurischians align toward the positive side of PC 1 but no other clustering is evident.