Re: New alvarezsaurid

["Ralph Miller III" <gbabcock@best.com>]

Matthew Troutman <m_troutman@hotmail.com> wrote:
> If some theropods did descend from 
> early birds, then you would expect _all_ the diagnostic features still 
> to be present. 

Perhaps so, but what if the early bird which gave rise to these theropods
is a basal form even more primitive than _Archaeopteryx_?  Then the
differences between the anatomy of the theropods derived from the early
bird and the anatomy of other theropods not derived from the early bird
would be somewhat less obvious; there would still be some features to
distinguish the lineages, but not as many as one would see were the
ancestral early bird of the theropods to be more derived (modern) in form.

-- Ralph Miller III     gbabcock@best.com