Re: Origin of feathers

["John V Jackson" <jjackson@interalpha.co.uk>]

-----Original Message--From: archosaur@usa.net Date: 11 April 1998 08:23


>owner-dinosaur@usc.edu wrote:
>> -----Original Message--From: archosaur@usa.net <Date: 09 April 1998 08:17
>> >
>> >What is a feather. To put it generally a feather is simply a modified
>> scale.
>>
>> I thought it had been decided it wasn't.  (Dinolist passim.)
>>
>> JJ
>------------------------
>
>Really? That's news to me (but then again many things are)
>
>I always figured feathers to just be modified scales. Especially
considering their placement on the body (shingle like) and their
composition.
>
>Dr. Hongyan Zou and Dr. Lee Niswander's experiment with webbed toes also
seems to indicate that feathers are linked with scales.
>
>When they had the feet in chicks retain the webbing the side effect was
that the scutes on the feet (the only true scales I know of on a bird)
turned to feathers.
>
>Interestingly enough it seems to indicate that scutes are modified
feathers. Truly a strange turn of events. This would also make feathers the
primitive characteristic and mean that feathers might have been found in
other archosaurs.
>
>When was it stated that feathers weren't scale modifications?
>
>Archosaur J

Well, that's a relief.  I could never really believe feathers weren't
modified scales.

On the Zou & N. experiment with chicks' webbing, I suspect, at the end of
the day, when all's said and done, it will transpire that the transformation
they observed will not violate the idea that scutes are basically scales,
and feathers are developments of them or scales.

JJ