FURRY SINODINOS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

I've just been looking at photos of the latest cf. _Sinornithosaurus_, or 
whatever it is. Needless to say, wow. 

I think a danger with these incredible specimens is that we tend to look 
at them and immediately put them into a live animal pose. Do this with 
the new specimen and then you must interpret the fibres on the head as 
a sort of raised crest that extends rostral to the caudal end of the 
antorbital fossa. Similarly, I know of reconstructions of the first 
specimen of _Sinornithosaurus_ that give it a raised furry crest over 
the frontals and parietals. These features may be real and may have 
looked this way in life. However, we are looking at corpses here. 
While they were obviously preserved while very much intact, it's likely 
that chunks of skin became rotated or distorted as the internal tissues 
had started to liquify and break down. I haven't spoken about this with 
a taphonomist yet (even though we have a few in the department here) 
and I wonder at what stage of decomposition these animals are thought 
to have been at. 

Another thing - the specimen is preserved as if squashed 
dorsoventrally, with the legs splayed out to the sides. This is really 
interesting and another effective refutation of one of the ABSRD 
[homage to Tim] school's arguments. Feduccia has claimed that birds 
can be preserved this way (it's common for frogs and pterosaurs also) 
because, unlike theropods, their bodies are dorsoventrally compressed 
and not deep and laterally compressed like those of theropods. This is 
disproven by _Archaeopteryx_ of course, but then Feduccia and co 
work hard to make this animal more like an extant bird than it really is. 
Anyway: here we have an honest-to-goodness 'traditional' deep-bodied 
theropod preserved in the dorsoventral plane - proof that being 
preserved this way does not remove you from the Theropoda. Or does 
this mean that this theropod was actually dorsoventrally compressed 
and hence a viable protobird for Tarsitano and Hecht et al? ;)

While you would think by now that the evidence for the presence of 
feather-like structures in non-avian dinosaurs is as concrete as it can 
be, I think there's one test that could prove it once and for all: style of 
preservation. Paul Davis says that feathers have a unique kind of 
preservation that allows them to be distinguished from all other 
integumentary structures (this is to do with the kinds of keratins from 
which feathers are made). If it could be shown that the structures on 
the Chinese theropods are chemically homologous with true feathers, 
and apparently this is possible, I think there might be more serious 
consideration of their reality from some quarters. It would get more 
biologists on our side too, many of which are swayed by John Ruben's 
arguments because they so respect his work on the physiology of extant 
animals. 

Ah, if only someone would find me a feathered psittacosaur:)

DARREN NAISH 
PALAEOBIOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
Burnaby Building
Burnaby Road                           email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
Portsmouth UK                          tel (mobile): 0776 1372651     
P01 3QL                                tel (office): 023 92842244