Re: New alvarezsaurid

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

I wrote...
> << Can you show the maniraptorian hand makes a better flyer then a
>  looser, shorter, more mobile hand?  Where are YOUR statistics? Flight
>  efficiency studies among three fingered birds and flyers with four and
>  five fingered hands....? >>

Dinogeorge wrote...
> All we can do is catalogue
> the existence or nonexistence of these features in the specimens we have.
> Who knows? Perhaps the less mobile hand evolved to help the ur-maniraptoran to
> scratch itself and preen better, and then all its descendants became stuck
> with this kind of hand to use as a wing, even though the looser, shorter hand
> would have made a "better" wing. If you think this is a ridiculous idea, show
> me why.

    I didn't say it was a ridiculous idea; but I don't see how you can
discard the idea that the tridactyl manus evolved for predation as
untestable speculation, and then turn around and say how BCF solves the
problem of the tridactyl manus with equally unsubstantiated
flying-preening-whatever models for the development of the same feature.  
Its an idea, but it does not give more weight to BCF then the predation
idea gives to "BADD" if both are purely speculative.

LN Jeff