Re: Feducciary challenges

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@home.com>]

>     The "feathers" of this fossil show up as brown stains on the slab, 
> and yet the brown stains in this picture are missing from the area 
> contacting the femur.  But there are lots of brown stains several inches 
> away from it.

Well, they seem to come pretty close to the skeleton to me - but even if 
they didn't, femoral feathers don't sprout directly from the femur even in 
modern birds.  The muscles etc have to go somewhere.

> Are the "feathers" on the femur several inches long with the proximal 
> parts not preserved?  It would be highly unusual to say the least.  If so, 
> then this "dino-bird" has "leg warmers": long feathers sticking out of its 
> thighs.  How an animal can run with long stiff feathers sticking out of 
> its thighs is beyond my imagination.

Who says they were stiff? And even if they were, why would this interfere 
with running (if this was a running animal)?  Porcupines walk quite well....

>     Lastly, the claim that dinosaurs needed insulation is simply 
> ludicrous.  Even therapsids didn't need insulation in the warm, equable 
> Mesozoic climate and there is no evidence that they had fur or Harderian 
> glands.  It is only when their descendants (the mammals) became small 
> (~50mm total length) and nocturnal that the first evidence of fur 
> appeared (in the form of Harderian glands), in the earliest mammals 
> (Ruben and Jones 2000, Selective Factors Associated with the Origin of 
> Fur and Feathers, Amer. Zool. vol.40, #4).  A duck-sized, presumably 
> diurnal dinosaur like this one would almost certainly not need insulation.

Our commentator may now explain the long fur of sakis, which live in the 
Amazonian rainforest.....

> --

Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2          mailto:ornstn@home.com