Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 1 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5791, p. 1238
DOI: 10.1126/science.1130964
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Technical Comments

Response to Comment on "A Well-Preserved Archaeopteryx Specimen with Theropod Features"

Gerald Mayr* and D. Stefan Peters

We agree that statistical support for our proposed phylogeny is weak, but the monophyly of Aves favored by most current researchers is also weakly supported. In the absence of unambiguous apomorphies of a clade including Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis but not deinonychosaurs, we do not believe that the statistical comparisons made by Corfe and Butler challenge our hypothesis regarding the ancestry of birds.

Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Sektion Ornithologie, Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Gerald.Mayr{at}senckenberg.de

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)