The next Republican Senate nominee is….
By Thoreau
Henry, a rare lizard who’s about to become a father again at the age of 110. Although contemporary GOP rules only allow the nomination of candidates whose scandals involve same-sex or underage partners, Henry is grandfathered in under the Strom Thurmond Rule. Despite apparent dinosaur ancestry, Henry maintains that only an intelligent designer could produce an organism that’s still having kids at age 110.
Comment by Greg Morrow —
August 7, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
Sphenodonts don’t have dinosaur ancestry. If I’m reading the cladogram right, they’re sister to snakes+lizards, and the whole (lepidosauromorpha) is sister to archosauromorpha (including the crocs and dinos, et al.).
My god, that was pedantic.
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 7, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
Not really, you could have mentioned the pleurosauridae.
Comment by Idi Amin's Last Meal —
August 7, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
S C I E N C E.
Comment by radish —
August 7, 2008 @ 10:55 pm
Greg, I think you are actually misreading it
Archosauromorpha and lepidosauromorpha are both diapsida, which I’m pretty sure is a “post-dinosaur” branch.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
August 8, 2008 @ 2:48 am
“Archosauromorpha and lepidosauromorpha are both diapsida, which I’m pretty sure is a “post-dinosaur†branch.”
So are primates — but they’re certainly not descended from dinosaurs!
Comment by Greg Morrow —
August 8, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
Radish: Nope. Dinosaurs are archosaurs, and archosaurs are diapsids. See e.g. here (eureptilia) and here (dinosaurs in archosauromorpha).
Comment by radish —
August 8, 2008 @ 5:47 pm
Okay I’ve poked at it some more and I guess we might just differ on what “dinosaur” means.
Before getting into gory details (I really need to get back to work now!), are you comfortable with a definition that excludes (e.g.) plesiosaurs? Cause if you want plesiosaurs you get Henry for sure. If no lepidosauromorphs are dinosaurs then I’d want to drill down a little further…
Comment by radish —
August 8, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Huh. Then again, it looks like “lepidosauromorphs are not dinosaurs” is well established, so I sheepishly withdraw my correction and concede that the common-ancestor choices are all squarely on the archosauromorphia branch. I guess if I’d looked more carefully I’d have seen that if I wanted plesiosaurs I’d have to accept rattlesnakes as well.
Comment by Greg Morrow —
August 11, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
Radish: There’s no question at all that plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs; the latter term is tightly restricted to ornithischia+saurischia, and excludes huge swaths of other extincts reptiles.
Comment by radish —
August 11, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
Yeah, so I discovered once I bothered to look a little more carefully. Sheepish grin, mea maxima culpa etc…