Re: Feathers for S excretion

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>
To: "-Dinosaur Mailing List-" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 11:26 PM
Subject: Re: Feathers for S excretion


> On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, Steve  Brusatte wrote:
>
> > Erm...this may be pressing it.  As far as I understand, hair evolved
> > from sensory bristles in early mammals.
>
> As I understand it, the earliest evidence for hair in _Synapsida_ is
> supposed whisker pits in basal _Cynodontia_. This doesn't mean that hair
> evolved from sensory bristles -- it could easily be the other way around,
> since senory bristles are one of the few types of hair that leave skeletal
> indicators.

I've seen both versions, and also a popular book that said _Dimetrodon_ had
whisker pits. Well, I don't know anything near the state-of-the-art of
synapsid paleontology, and probably nobody on this list knows it (or is
there someone?), so we may be forced to leave it at that.