Longrich YouTube Video on ‘What if the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct?”

Comments follow:

Nick, nice presentation. Thoughtful.

@2:27 your cladogram is out of date. A more recent analysis with 600+ synapsids follows Wortman 1902 in finding 4 advents for the placenta. See the large reptile tree online.

@3:05 Tree shrews are shrew and tenrec ancestors, not primate ancestors. Convergence is present. Primate ancestors include Oodectes and Notharctus then Vulpavus, etc. Tarsiers are not primitive. Primitive tarsiers are mouse lemur ancestors, which gave rise to bats. See the large reptile tree online.

@3:30 you describe the first ‘true’ primates, but they are defined by their last common ancestor. Thus defined dermopterans and bats are also primates. Aegyptopithecus (not shown in the video) gave rise to baboons, monkeys and apes, not tarsiers. See the large reptile tree online.

@16:35 Contra your claims, pterosaurs developed several flightless forms. See ‘first flightless pterosaur’ online at ResearchGate. PAL SoS 228 had tiny wings and was a wader. Azhdarchids had vestigial terminal wing digits, even at human-size and smaller. So odd = unbalanceable proportions were possible and resulted in giants.

@17:07 you mention bats rule the night, but you are forgetting owls and oilbirds. More to the point, many people have heard flocks of geese flying at night. Pterosaur adults ranged in size down to that of a bee-hummingbird, so not all pterosaurs were giants, as you say. They have the same size space as birds. Anurognathids were capable insectivores with most in the size range of bats.

@30:31 you mentioned Australaves. In trait analysis parrots and sparrows do nest together, but with chickens and peacocks. Falcons nest apart with owls and ospreys. Crows also nest apart with blue jays and shrikes, derived from hoopoes. Genomic study cladograms don’t match trait study cladograms and genomic studies omit fossil taxa, so avoid genomic studies.

@45:43 you talk about evolutionary petri dishes. Nice analog.

@46:35 you mentioned South American monkeys rafting over from Africa. This is not necessary as their adapid ancestors, Notharctus and Smilodectes, were in southern North America in the Eocene.

@47:35 you show Carpolestes, a plesidapiform. This gnawing clade with huger incisors and a diastema was basal to multituberculates, rodents and the Madagascar aye-aye, Daubentonia – not at all related to primates

It might interest you to know that trait analysis nests humans with Hylobates (a gibbon), Ardipithecus, Oreopithecus and Homo floresiensis. Australopithecus was bipedal by convergence, nesting with chimps. Gibbons are already bipedal, slender, small face, eyebrows, small nose, born naked (think neotony), sing (think vocal communication), mate for life, fight with fists not teeth, have a long Achilles tendon and hide their fertility signals. Humans and gibbons never knuckle-walk and they come in black, red, brown and blonde.

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