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

Gigantspinosaurus groups closely with Huayangosaurus . The “basal” thyreophoran taxa, including Lesothosaurus , all cluster with each other in Fig. 61 and Fig. 62. PC 2 groups the “basal” thyreophorans with the outgroup, but PC 3 shows a large separation between the two. Once again, PC 3 was unable to separate Tuojiangosaurus and Paranthodon from an ankylosaur ( Euoplocephalus ). PC 3 also separated several stegosaurid genera from the rest: Kentrosaurus , Huayangosaurus , Chungkingosaurus , and Gigantspinosaurus (Fig. 62). C. Ankylosauria The BDC results for Vickaryous et al . ’s (2004) data matrix, in Weishampel et al . (2004), show three major clusters of positive correlation: 1) Ankylosauridae, 2) Nodosauridae, and 3) outgroup taxa (Fig. 63). All of the nodosaurids share positive correlation except Gastonia , which is only positively correlated with Gargoyleosaurus , and Gargoyleosaurus , which is only correlated positively with Gastonia and Pawpawsaurus , which links it to the main block of nodosaurids. The ankylosaurid block appears to be made out of two blocks that share positive correlation between them. Almost all of the ankylosaurids share negative correlation with the main nodosaurid block and the outgroup taxa. Classical MDS results show separation between Ankylosauridae and Nodosauridae as two groups with Gastonia and Gargoyleosaurus positioned midway between them (Fig. 64). PCA results present a different image with groups distributed along an arc; the same two genera are positioned midway along the continuum (Fig. 65). PCA results for Zheng et al.’s (2018) dataset provided a different topology for theAnkylosauria. Instead of an arc-shaped distribution of taxa, Zheng’s larger dataset reveals a separation between the Ankylosauridae and Nodosauridae along PC 1 in two morphoseries (Fig. 66). PC 2 further shows a clustered series of ankylosaurids while the nodosaurid series displayed wider spatial separation. Nodosaurids Gargoyleosaurus , Gastonia , and Hungarosaurus alone overlap with ankylosaurs on PC 2. Comparing PC 3 with PC 1 separates ankylosaurids and nodosaurids in a similar fashion, clustering only the ankylosaurs (Fig. 67). One ankylosaurid ( Crichtonpelta ) and two nodosaurids ( Gargoyleosaurus and Gastonia ) are distinguished by PC 3. D. Basal Ornithopoda The BDC results for Norman, Sues et al.’s (2004) data matrix, in Weishampel et al . (2004), show two main clusters of positive correlation separated by negative correlation in some cases (Fig. 68). One cluster corresponds to Heterodontosaurus and the outgroup Doran et al. ◀ Dinosaur baraminology ▶ 2018 ICC 428 Figure 47 . BDC results for Otero et al.’s (2015) data matrix for Sauropodomorpha, as calculated by BDISTMDS (relevance cutoff 0.75). Closed squares indicate significant, positive BDC; open circles indicate significant, negative BDC.