Boyer diss 2009 1046..

Gingerich and Gunnell (1992) published a photograph of the skeleton of P. cookei
(UM 87990) being formally described in this study, mounted in a life-like posture to
highlight its incorporation into the Hall of Evolution of the University of Michigan’s
Exhibit Museum. It was mounted clinging to a vertical tree trunk to illustrate the
interpretation of it presented by these authors in abstract form in 1987.
Beard (1993a) presented results of a cladistic analysis of Archonta including
various plesiadapifoms. The analysis recovered plesiadapiforms as stem dermopterans.
More specifically, plesiadapids formed the outgroup to a clade he called “Eudermoptera”
(=Paromomyidae + Cynocephalidae). He compared and contrasted previously described
morphology of plesiadapids to that of other plesiadapiforms and archontans. One
synapomorphy of the clades supported by his analyses was his interpretation of carpal
configuration based on the morphology of the bones of N. intermedius (USNM 442229)
(p. 137, fig. 10.8). He suggested that both N. intermedius and dermopterans had a
triquetrum that contacted the scaphoid and lunate on its radial surface (see Sargis [2004]
for a more thorough critique of Beard [1993a]).
Runestad and Ruff (1995) tested the hypothesis of Gingerich (1976) that the
“robustness” of plesiadapids limbs was evidence of terrestriality in this group, and the
hypothesis of Beard (1993b) that paromomyid plesiadapiforms were gliders. They did
this by regressing limb lengths against limb cross-sectional areas for comparative
samples of extant gliding, nongliding arboreal, and nongliding terrestrial/fossorial
rodents, and marsupials. They found that gliders had the longest limb bones relative to
the cross-sectional areas of their limb bones and that nongliding terrestrialists had the
relatively shortest limb bones (= the most robust limbs). They analyzed previously
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