Re: Caution- "down-like" feathers

[Jeff Hecht <jhecht@world.std.com>]

At 2:03 PM -0400 4/27/01, TomHopp@aol.com wrote:
>   The point Ji and others seem to agree with is that the observed, basally
> branched structures in the fossils fit well with Prum's evolutionary model of
> a down-like branching pattern evolving BEFORE the pinnate branching pattern.
> Fuzzy natal down is just a limited sub-class of down-like feathers. Those on
> the new dromaeosaurs and troodon are different, and seem very un-down-like to
> our (my) modern, natal-down-conditioned sensibilites. But they are still
> called "down-like" for the reasons I just mentioned.

Good point. Another thing to remember is that all the 'feathered 
dinosaurs' lived 10-20 million years _after_ archaeopteryx. Strictly 
speaking, they had that time to diverge from a common ancestor they 
shared with birds. What we see on the dinosaur fossils are not  true 
'ancestral' feathers, but something that has had millions of years to 
evolve after birds first flew. The Chinese fossils give a broad 
sampling of all the ways that feathers diverged from their original 
form. -- Jeff Hecht