Re: Triassic birds

[theropod@garnet.berkeley.edu (John R. Hutchinson)]

>The problem with the interesting and not yet disproven (and very hard to disp
>rove) idea that birds arose in the Triassic, is the lack of any avian
>skeletons or shed feathers

Exactly. "Longisquama" and "Protoavis" cannot be counted as avian remains
until a detailed description is published. Unprepared specimens don't
really belong in cladograms, or phylogenies.

>This suggests
>early birds were starting to fly over, fall into, and shed feathers onto,
>water at this time, for the first time.

It only shows that avians were there. The behavior involved is not
preserved in the fossil record.

>Unless positively identifiable
>bird remains start showing up in the Triassic-Jurassic, the
>Chatterjee-Olshevsky hypothesis is speculative.
>
>GSPaul

Right on! Now we're getting somewhere!

                        John R. Hutchinson
                  Evolving Evolutionary Biologist
                 Department of Integrative Biology
                  3060 Valley Life Sciences Bldg
                University of California - Berkeley
                        Berkeley, CA 94720
                          (510) 643-2109
         http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/people/jrh/homepage.html