Re: birds/dinos

[John Erick Schneiderman <dino@cwis.unomaha.edu>]

On Tue, 25 Oct 1994 BPC.APA@email.apa.org wrote:

> If more or less modern-style birds go back as far as the jurassic, what 
> then, and where, is the link between birds and those dinos that have the 
> most bird-like features? And weren't most of these dinos from the 
> cretaceous? Is archeopteryx now out of the loop?
> Blaise Considine [bpc.apa@email.apa.org]
> 
The fossil record is far from complete.  The ancestor of modern birds most
likely occured sometime within the middle Jurassic (the Triassic dinosaur
Protavis is not a bird) and most likely somewhere in Europe (ideal island
habitats).  Archaeopteryx is most likely a dead end in the evolution of modern
birds.  Early Cretaceous maniraptoran dinosaurs may be the end result of
flightless bird development.

--John Schneiderman (dino@cwis.unomaha.edu)