Re: Lizard Frills and Chimeras

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

<I've had some brief e-mail conversations with Alan Feduccia in regard 
to his views on recent dino bird finds. I'll be talking to Cathy Forster 
on Monday, and Luis Chiappe when he returns from Argentina. I'm 
wondering what people here think...>

You've covered some important bases, but you're not home yet. Martin 
needs a look too---he supports the dino-bird group as well.

<I asked Feduccia about Sinosauropteryx; he stated that the fibers along 
the fossil's spin are not feathers, but collegen fibers that supported a 
frill. I've heard him make this claim before, although he tells me that 
"it will all come out soon." Is there any conclusive evidence as to the 
nature of these "fibers?" Not having access to the fossil myself, I can 
only go by the rather small pictures I've seen (the best was in 
Scientific American a few months back). If anyone has a large, 
high-quality picture, I'd love to see it.>

Protofeather, hair, colagen---let him tell you where his evidence for a 
colagen-frill comes from. What you'll also hear is that the fibers are 
found on the underside of the tail, which would be more analogous to a 
fox's tail than to any fish or ichthyosaur's tail fin. That probably 
means the entire tail was surrounded by the fluff (and let me be the 
first to call the 2nd specimen of Sino "Fluffy"!) or at least in the 
broken patterns as seen on the pictures. The frill running down the 
head, neck, back, etc. also may have been covering the sides as well as 
the top, and thus negate Feduccia's claim.

The drawings I'm doing of Sino and Compso show this pattern with the 
undersides bare except at the tail region.

<Feduccia also claims that Rahona ostromi is a "chimera" formed from two 
fossils. He tells me that "Varona" (I don't know the name) found a
wingless bird in the same deposit, suggesting that the missing parts 
were mistakenly identified as part of Rahona. I know something of how 
deposits are laid down, and I wonder how close these two specimens were 
in time and space.>

*Vorona* was found a long way away from *Rahona* (don't get too used to 
the name, it's going to change), and Feduccia either doesn't know this, 
or didn't tell you. I'm not playing Alan as a villain, by the way, but 
he needs to see the other side of the fence before he can paint a 
picture of that side.

Every part of *Rahona* is avian-style/dromaeosaur-style. The only 
strange feature of the "Menace from the Clouds" is the apprent fusion of 
the three anterior dorsals that may be a bad preservation or a notarium 
(bird-style, by the way) with everything else marking an 
archaeopterygian, then the reversed hallux placed ventrally to the pes. 
The rest of the pes is dromaeosaur/archie-style, and the hallux was most 
certainly connected to it when preserved.

Ah, but you should read the posts in the Archives about the Sino-feather 
deal---it went on a while.

Jaime A. Headden
Qilongia

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