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

taxa or dromaeosaurids. B. Deinonychosauria Dromaeosaurids and troodontids both appear to be discontinuous from most “basal” avialans (as discussed above) and scansoriopterygids (see Figs. 58 and 59) based on a lack of positive correlation and sometimes negative correlation in BDC results and separation from these taxa in MDS. However, the relationship of dromaeosaurids to troodontids is a little more difficult to determine. In the BDC results for the paravian subsets of Brusatte et al. (2014) and Lee et al. (2014) there are clear instances of shared positive correlation between dromaeosaurids and troodontids (Figs. 20 and 36). The 3D MDS results for these paravian subset analyses all show clustering between dromaeosaurids and troodontids (Figs. 21 and 37). In the paravian subset BDC of van der Reest and Currie (2017), there are links of positive correlation between dromaeosaurids and troodontids mainly through Buitreraptor and Anchiornis (Fig. 58), and the MDS shows them as two separate clusters with Buitreraptor in between (Fig. 59). The Zanno (2010) BDC, which only included dromaeosaurids, troodontids, Archaeopteryx , and Confuciusornis , showed no correlation of any kind between dromaeosaurids and troodontids (Fig. 48), and a gap in morphological space between their clusters (Fig. 49). Thus, all of these analyses, except for Zanno (2010), show evidence of continuity between Dromaeosauridae and Troodontidae. It is worth noting that Zanno (2010) is the oldest of the datasets, and its focus is on therizinosaurs, not paravians. Additional evidence for continuity between Dromaeosauridae and Troodontidae comes in the form of the unenlagiine Buitreraptor . Unenlagiines are a long- snouted subfamily of dromaeosaurids exclusively known from the southern hemisphere. Interestingly, in the analysis of the paravian McLain et al. ◀ Feathered dinosaurs reconsidered ▶ 2018 ICC 494 Figure 43. MDS results of the non-pennaraptoran coelurosaur subset of the Lee et al. (2014) dataset in two views ( left, right ). Colors: turquoise – Therizinosauria; green – Alvarezsauroidea; blue – Ornithomimosauria; brown – “basal” Coelurosauria; purple – Tyrannosauroidea. Figure 42. BDC results of the non-pennaraptoran coelurosaur subset of the Lee et al. (2014) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation. Shuvuuia Mononykus Erlikosaurus Yutyrannus Tyrannosaurus Harpymimus Garudimimus Ornithomimus Gallimimus Falcarius Haplocheirus Nqwebasaurus Tanycolagreus Guanlong Dilong Ornitholestes Juravenator Zuolong Sinocalliopteryx Huaxiagnathus Sinosauropteryx Compsognathus