RE: Ichthyornis dispar

[Toby White <mwhite@houston.rr.com>]

Dan:

Yep.  That's exactly the way OC Marsh's 1880 figure looks, and the only 
other skeletal reconstructions I've seen so far were based on his.  The 
proportions are not all that different from, say, an ibis.  In fact one of 
the early Ichthyornis specimens was originally thought to be an ibis.

Ichthyornis actually looks a bit less extreme than a pelican.  I spent 
years near pelicans and I still can't understand how they can fly.  In fact 
they don't always succeed on the first attempt and are notoriously awkward 
in the air.  However, evolution is not a beauty contest.

  --Toby White

Vertebrate Notes at
http://dinodata.net and
http://home.houston.rr.com/vnotes



On Monday, January 10, 2000 8:45 PM, dbensen [SMTP:dbensen@gotnet.net] 
wrote:
>
> I'm doing a reconstruction of Ichthyornis dispar in the usual way 
(looking at
> skeletal reconstructions and fleshing them out) and I've encountered 
something
> odd.  Ichthyornis's head is _huge_!  In the reconstrcution I'm looking at 
(in The
> Rise of Birds by Sankar Chatterjee) the cranium is about the same size as 
the rib
> cage.  The cranium and beak are about the same length as the torso.  Even 
with
> light, avian, engineering, the head looks like it would overbalance the 
body when
> in flight.  What's going on here?  Is the reconstruction incorrect?  Is 
the
> largness of the head an illusion because I'm used to looking at birds in
> feathers?
>
> Thanks
>
> Dan