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

Abstract

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.