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You know how extreme left and right wingers are
said to bend round so far they begin to approach each other? Well, I think
the BCF and the Feduccian views may be in danger of this. Having said that
all the likely Cretaceous suspects are descendants of Archaeopteryx, that
doesn't leave anything for it to have descended from! OK, so we haven't
found any gliding precursors in the J, but then, isn't it true to say we haven't
found ANY likely precursors! Apart from the Compsognathus group, which
would look good as some kind of sister group, aren't we left with a choice
between _Ornitholestes_ and "Protoavis"? That leaves an awful
lot of unknown, and the strongest argument for bird origins within the dinosaurs
may be the similarity between Archaeopteryx and . . . what? The vast
majority of N hemisphere maniraptorans?!
JJ
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