Re: Feathers on Bloody Everything

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/29/99 3:03:18 PM EST, ornstn@home.com writes:

<< Yes, that may be - and note that Brush et al. are NOT calling them
 protofeathers - but it is even worse to call them "feathers".  There is
 absolutely nothing about them that makes such an unequivocal diagnosis
 possible (and of course as we don't have a diagnosis of a "protofeather");
 all we can really say is that they are integumentary structures that COULD
 be homologous with feathers (a conclusion that says nothing about
 directionality of evolution).  This has nothing to do with phylogeny,
 cladistics or whatever.  Calling them "feathers" either forces us to
 broaden considerably the definition of a feather, or to assume that they
 are degenerate derivatives of the type of structures we see in
 Archaeopteryx or Caudipteryx - something for which there is no evidence to
 my knowledge. >>

Absolutely agree 100%. I have taken to calling that stuff DINOFUZZ: "fibroid 
or hairlike, fringing or overall, integumentary structures of theropod 
dinosaurs." Not feathers, not protofeathers, not pre-feathers.