Re: ARE ORNITHOPODS BORING?

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

> Errm... the evolution of carpal spurs and knobs, extreme pugnacity and 
> territoriality, nest parasitism, creching behaviour, parental carrying of 
> young both in the water and (!) in the air, monogamous pair-bonding, 
> underwater copulation and the (?)reinvention of the penis, major 
> sexual variation in tracheal structure, grass-eating and 20-minute gut 
> carrying time, niche partitioning according to intestine size, carrion 
> feeding on Subantarctic islands, the evolution of fern-eating, island 
> giantism, island dwarfism, crepuscularity, serrated bill margins, filter 
> feeding with buccal lamellae, deep-diving, species where males are 
> flightless but females flighted, coevolution of browsing forms with 
> spiky lobelioideaens, repeated increases and decreases in body size 
> during phylogeny, the annual transportation of TONNES of sand... and, 
> pant pant pant, quacking.
> 
> How *ON EARTH* can ducks be boring?????

I miss something here... the mihirung (Dromornithidae), giant flightless
birds of Eocene -- Pleistocene Australia, which were just found out to be
_carnivorous ducks_, with enormous beaks much like *Gastornis* ("*Diatryma*").

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