Re: Velociraptor Animation

["dinotracker" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    David Marjanovic commented in response to my comments about why
Velociraptors might have few if any feathers on their heads, "I was
serious...While many vultures...do have naked heads and necks like this,
hyenas don't. So this is equivocal."

    True, but hyenas don't have feathers on their heads, either.  :-)  I
suspect that hair is a lot more easily cleaned of dried blood than feathers
would be.  So, I'm not sure it is equivocal.

    Ray Stanford

"You know my method.  It is founded upon the observance of trifles." --
Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: "The Dinosaur Mailing List" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 3:55 PM
Subject: Re: Velociraptor Animation


----- Original Message -----
From: "dinotracker" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 7:00 PM


>     David Marjanovic commented of the Velociraptor animation, saying, "And
> why doesn't it have feathers on its head?"
>
>     David may have said that tongue-in-cheek, because of what was on the
> heads of 'Velociraptors' in the recent installment of Jurassic Park; but
> kidding or not, it seems to me that an animal which might be, for example,
> sticking its head into a ripped-open abdomen might get along better
without
> much in the way of feathers on its head.

I was serious (who was it who wrote onlist that the things on the head of
the JPIII raptors were the poorest excuse for feathers he had ever seen?)...
While many vultures (not all, *Gypaetus barbatus* is a notable exception) do
have naked heads and necks like this, hyenas don't. So this is equivocal.
The real reason why I mentioned this is that I've practically never seen a
restoration of a beakless dinosaur with feathers all over its head, even of
species where no such considerations can come into effect; in species like
*Sinosauropteryx prima* or http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/f6.html where
feathers are preserved there, by far most artists let them end exactly where
preparation has ended. Well.

Regarding the hand feathers, these may indeed have extended further, as in
http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/f11.html and
http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/f14.html where they cover at least the
thumb, but the big wings this specimen has might be inconvenient for a
bigger predator like *Velociraptor*, so I'd rather not speculate further
here.