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

genus Haplocheirus is thought to be an alvarezsauroid outside Alvarezsauridae. Like the alvarezsaurids, its first digit on each hand is more robust than the other digits, but unlike alvarezsaurids the other fingers are long and functional. Other than Haplocheirus , Mononykus , and Shuvuuia , most alvarezsauroids are very poorly known. In fact, only one analysis was able to retain more alvarezsauroids than these three ( Patagonykus is in the Brusatte et al. (2014) alvarezsauroid + ornithomimosaur + “basal” coelurosaur subset analysis). Alvarezsaurids are incredibly distinct from the other theropods in the most exclusive subset analyses that contain them. The BDC plots from these analyses show negative correlation or no correlation between alvarezsaurids and the rest of the taxa (Figs. 26, 42, 54, and 62). Additionally, they do not cluster together with other taxa in the 3D MDS plots from these analyses (Figs. 27, 43, 55, and 63). This suggests Alvarezsauridae is surrounded by discontinuity. Haplocheirus never shows any links to the alvarezsaurid taxa in any analysis. This could be because it is not in the same holobaramin as alvarezsaurids. Another possibility is that the taxa that would link Haplocheirus to alvarezsaurids are poorly known or unknown. This seems likely given the fact that most analyses only contained three alvarezsauroids, the most “basal” form and two of the most “derived” forms. At this point, we tentatively suggest that Alvarezsauridae is a holobaramin, but we suspect that future analyses may reveal that the holobaramin is actually at the McLain et al. ◀ Feathered dinosaurs reconsidered ▶ 2018 ICC 501 Figure 61. MDS results of the Oviraptorosauria subset of the van der Reest and Currie (2017) dataset in two views (A and B). Colors: pink – Oviraptorosauria; turquoise – Therizinosauria; gray – Scansoriopterygidae. Figure 60. BDC results of the Oviraptorosauria subset of the van der Reest and Currie (2017) dataset. Black squares indicate significant positive correlation, whereas open circles indicate significant negative correlation.