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

in the baraminological analyses has been challenging. Typically, only Falcarius and one or two therizinosaurids are included in the analyses. These analyses always showed the therizinosaurid taxon or taxa (for a Brusatte et al. (2014) subset) as sharing negative or no correlation with the other taxa in BDC plots (e.g., Figs. 30, 42, and 62). No analysis ever showed positive correlation between Falcarius and other therizinosaurs. Even in the analysis that included the most therizinosaurs, the therizinosaur subset of Zanno (2010), the BDC revealed positive correlation between Falcarius and the outgroup taxa rather than with any therizinosaurs (Fig. 52). We will focus our discussion on the therizinosaur subset analysis of Zanno (2010), since it was the only analysis to contain more than three therizinosaur taxa. The BDC results (Fig. 52) show positive correlation between the therizinosaurids and Alxasaurus , which we interpret as evidence for continuity. Beipiaosaurus is positively correlated with only Alxasaurus and Jianchangosaurus , which is correlated with nothing else. Thus, we tentatively interpret the BDC results to mean that all of these therizinosaurs are continuous with each other and discontinuous from other theropods. Additionally, the 3D MDS results of the same Zanno (2010) subset reveal an intriguing pattern. The therizinosaurs make a line in morphological space, with Jianchangosaurus on one end and Segnosaurus on the other (Fig. 53). It is difficult to tell fromthe figure, but Erlikosaurus is a little removed from the trajectory, but is closest to the Segnosaurus end. It would appear that the therizinosaur taxa form a biological trajectory, much like Cenozoic equids (Cavanaugh et al. 2003) and Mesozoic tyrannosauroids (Aaron, 2014b). These taxa are lined up, in general, according to their evolutionary trajectory, with Jianchangosaurus as a basal therizinosaurian, followed by the non- therizinosaurid therizinosauroids Beipiaosaurus and Alxasaurus , which are in turn followed by the derived therizinosaurids. McLain et al. ◀ Feathered dinosaurs reconsidered ▶ 2018 ICC 498 Figure 55. MDS results of the Alvarezsauroidea + non-maniraptoran coelurosaur subset of the Zanno (2010) dataset. Colors: green – Alvarezsauroidea; blue – Ornithomimosauria; brown – “basal” Coelurosauria; purple – Tyrannosauroidea. Figure 54. BDC results of the Alvarezsauroidea + non-maniraptoran coelurosaur subset of the Zanno (2010) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation. Figure 52. BDC results of the Therizinosauria subset of the Zanno (2010) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation. Figure 53. MDS results of the Therizinosauria subset of the Zanno (2010) dataset. Colors: pink – Oviraptorosauria; turquoise – Therizinosauria; blue – Ornithomimosauria.