RE: [Fwd: Dinosaur Society]

[Stephen Faust <smfaust@edisto.cofc.edu>]

The "crown" group of a bit more than superficially bird - like dinosaurs
is like a flower and most flowers have a stem. In this case, the stem is
an ancestral lineage that travels backward in time. Bird - like dinosaurs
didn't just appear. The crown is a product of many years of
evolution. Birds could well have evolved as a branch from the
stem. In that case they would be related to the bird - like dinosaurs and
they would represent their decendents. 

Stephen Faust                   smfaust@edisto.cofc.edu

On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Stewart, Dwight wrote:

> Sorry about the (very) late reply, but I thought the Dinosaur Society was
> defunct or nearly so.  Do they even still have their web site?
> 
> Also, I'd love to hear some comments regarding;
> 
> "The theory that birds descended from dinosaurs has become dogma in the past
> 20 years or so, and yet a large number of people do not accept it because
> there are insurmountable problems with that theory," Feduccia said. "First,
> there is the time problem in that superficially bird-like dinosaurs occurred
> some 30 million to 80 million years after the earliest known bird, which is
> 150 million years old." 
> I'm a physicist & mathematician, not a paleontologist, but I don't see any
> scientific basis for labeling the "dinosaur/bird" link as "dogma".
> 
> Dwight
> 
>       -----Original Message-----
>       From:   Peter Leo Herrera [SMTP:big_ed@pacbell.net]
>       Sent:   Wednesday, August 26, 1998 4:22 PM
>       To:     dinosaur@usc.edu
>       Subject:        [Fwd: Dinosaur Society]
> 
>        << Message: Dinosaur Society >> 
>