DINOBIRDS

[Tetanurae@aol.com]

I saw a talk given by Phil Currie last Monday along with Nick Pharris and Sam 
Girouard at the University of Washington in Seattle.  There was not a lot new 
to Phil's talk, but it was still captivating nonetheless.

One new thing that I did see was that Currie had new slides of 
Sinosauropteryx integument up close.  The fibres definitely seem to show a 
complex structure that I didn't see at SVP.

They ARE in fact branching bristles and remind me a lot of what an onion or a 
leak looks like.... a thick central shaft that splits into many sub-parallel 
shafts and loses the central shaft.... It's hard to find an allegory.

Very neat and fuzzy looking :-)

He also said to be on the lookout for some new and interesting things out of 
Liaonang in the next month or so, surely the naming of the therizinosaur was 
at least part of the news.

Peter Buchholz
Tetanurae@aol.com