Re: Origin of feathers

["Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com>]

I wrote:

<<...or even flight related.>>

Patrick Norton wrote:

<I guess that could be true for flightless birds, but are you saying 
that extant flying birds have some wing feathers that are not related to 
flight? If so, I'd be interested in knowing the purpose of those 
feathers and which birds they are found on.>

  By flight feather, we talk about the primaries and secondaries, but I 
forgot that the alula functions as an airfoil (for aerial flight) and 
all the other contour feathers operated to reduce drag during both 
aquatic and aerial flight, so in fact, all feathers on a volant bird's 
arm or flight related.

  I was refering to the primary/secondary form of feather, but missed 
the sematics, so didn't get too thourough; the primary/secondary feather 
set are directly correlary to flight, the alula is not neccesary, but 
contours...we don't know what form of feathers covered *Archaeopteryx'* 
arms, except that they were "contours" as per a previous post on the 
matter, oh, I think it was in February.

  My appologies.

Jaime A. Headden

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com