Re: A New Hypothesis for the Origin of Flight?

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Waylon Rowley" <whte_rbt_obj@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 6:31 PM

> What do you
> know about the new long-tailed "deinonychosaur" from
> the Jehol? Does it have retrices like Archie, and if
> so, is there a distal fan?

Judging from the photo in Nature, there is only a little fan of pretty long
rectrices at the tip of the tail.

> Or is lost early on in forms that returned to the
> ground.

Would have to have happened very often and pretty fast, I think, while it
happens rather rarely in birds.

> In DA, HP Gregory Paul suggested that in quite
> a few specimens we are unsure of the placement and
> condition of the hallux, due to disarticulation.

But at least not of its length :-)
        I think it's safe to say that all well enough preserved specimens
of, er, of theropods that have ever been thought not to be birds, with the
exception of the aye-aye, don't show long, reverted halluces.