RE: Digiy - loss - 5 finger fliers - stiff tails

["Tracy Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of MarkEShelly@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 5:48 PM
To: Dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: re: Digiy - loss - 5 finger fliers - stiff tails

  In addition, the stiff tails appear to me to be a feature evolved from a
feathered rudder.  It did not allow faster turning as I have seen mentioned
(when compared to a flexible tail of the same size).  It also appears to be
related to reduced reliance on tail based muscles being used in providing
forward thrust, (also suggesting a flying ancestor would be possible).  
  Right or wrong, that is my current take on the digit loss subject.
Mark "glad I commented earlier" Shelly

 

One of the major problems with people in trying to understand arboreality is that the only arboreal animals they are thinking of are like lizards or small five toed animals and that only they could be arboreal. Who are we to say animals like dromaeosaurids couldn’t climb because they couldn’t climb like a lizard? Why?

 

Look at monkey’s. Do they always hug a tree when they climb? Do they sometimes hold their body away from the trunk and climb?

We have to start opening our minds to other ways of climbing. And it’s not just one thing for flight to have started. It is dozen’s of things that the animal had to change/evolve for flight. Climbing is one of them. Holding the body away from the trunk and climbing is another. Not impossible.

 

Tracy L. Ford

P. O. Box 1171

Poway Ca  92074