Bird /dino questions

[Martin Human <martin@hpentccl.grenoble.hp.com>]

"Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com> wrote:

> give rise to smaller, longer-armed creatures who continued to reduce > > the  
> tail and eventually formed a pygostyle, and the skull, of course, > needed to 
> change only slightly. So, BADD has its merits.

Maybe a dumb question, and I'm groping for something here, but do we see
a correlation between reducing tail length and lightening of the skull
anywhere in the evolution of birds? Just that, aerodynamically, I
imagine you want fore and aft equilibrium about the COG for flight (the
wiings?), so each loss of tail length should be reflected in a
corresponding loss of skull weight (or to a shorter neck, up to a
certain point, after which you _have_ to reduce skull weight becuase the
neck vertebrae cannot be made any shorter)?.

Also, flying seems to imply that, if the COG is moved forward to the
wings, then an upright stance when grounded is obliged, in order to
bring the COG back over the (rear) legs?  Voila, bi-pedalism could be 
the consequence of flight?

Makes me think I probably subscribe to BCF.


cheers, martin
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Martin Human
TID Information Development Group, Hewlett-Packard, Grenoble, France
[33] 4 76 14 65 34
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