Re: Ruben Strikes Back

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/24/99 2:59:54 PM EST, NJPharris@aol.com writes:

<< Speaking of which, why wouldn't they have been "nearly as derived for 
flight 
 as are the modern birds"?  This hypothesis requires tens of millions of 
years 
 of essential stasis at a low level of flightworthiness, even though only a 
 few million years had to pass to derive fliers of essentially modern flight 
 competence from _Archaeopteryx_ or like forms. >>

They could very well have been very flightworthy indeed. We have no fossil 
record of them, however, so we can't even guess at how flightworthy they 
were. It took pterosaurs most of the Jurassic to lose their tails, for 
example. It could well have taken a similar amount of time for dinobirds to 
do so, which would be why the usual theropods all have long tails.