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

at some distance are the alvarezsaurids, Erlikosaurus , and some non-tetanuran taxa ( “Syntarsus” kayentakatae , Limusaurus , Masiakasaurus , and Majungasaurus ). These BDC and MDS results made us suspect that the large amount of very disparate taxa are masking discontinuity. Thus, we reanalyzed two subsets of this dataset: 1) non-coelurosaurs + Tyrannosauroidea and 2) non- pennaraptoran coelurosaurs. The BDC (Fig. 40) for the Tyrannosauroidea + non-coelurosaur subset of taxa (333 characters, 20 taxa, 0.25 TRC) is split up into five blocks of positive correlation and the abelisaurid Majungasaurus , which correlates with no other taxa. There are two blocks of two taxa each: 1) ceratosaurs Limusaurus and Masiakasaurus and 2) Tawa and Herrerasaurus . Another block of positive correlation contains three coelophysoid-grade theropods: Dilophosaurus , “Syntarsus” kayentakatae , and Cryolophosaurus (although Cryolophosaurus may be a tetanuran (Carrano et al. 2012)). The next block of taxa contains the tyrannosauroids, but Yutyrannus and Tyrannosaurus share positive correlation with Allosaurus in the large block. The large block contains an assortment of non-coelurosaur tetanurans and Ceratosaurus . In general, the 3D MDS results (Fig. 41) are similar to the BDC results, showing Majungasaurus by itself, and then two main clusters, a diffuse cluster containing all of the herrerasaurids and more “basal” theropods and a second cluster made up of two smaller clusters, one corresponding to tyrannosauroids and the other to the remaining taxa. Concerning the non-pennaraptoran coelurosaur taxa from the Lee et al. (2014) dataset, the subset (189 characters, 22 taxa, 0.25 TRC) BDC (Fig. 42) shows a block of positive correlation containing the two alvarezsaurid taxa, which share negative correlation or no correlation with every other taxon in the BDC. The therizinosaurid Erlikosaurus does not correlate with any other taxa except negatively with Yutyrannus and Tyrannosaurus . The McLain et al. ◀ Feathered dinosaurs reconsidered ▶ 2018 ICC 486 Figure 22. BDC results for the Tyrannosauroidea + “basal” Coelurosauria subset of the Brusatte et al. (2014) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation. Figure 23: MDS results for the Tyrannosauroidea + “basal” Coelurosauria subset of the Brusatte et al. (2014) dataset. Colors: brown – “basal” Coelurosauria; purple – Tyrannosauroidea. Figure 24. BDC results for the “basal” Tyrannosauroidea + “basal” Coelurosauria subset of the Brusatte et al. (2014) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation. Figure 25: MDS results for the “basal” Tyrannosauroidea + “basal” Coelurosauria subset of the Brusatte et al. (2014) dataset. Colors: brown – “basal” Coelurosauria; purple – Tyrannosauroidea.