Re: Sinosauropteryx feathers?

[MariusRomanus@aol.com]

Mr. Lovejoy,.... Being the way that I am.... as in putting beaks on my 
tyrannosaurs and the like (more on that for the list later), and with what GSP 
says in DA, coupled with what we are dealing with here to begin with, I'd smack 
body contour feathers on the sucker. We all know that birds always have 
numerous different types of feathers on their bodies. After all, using only 
"negative evidence" to dictate how you reconstruct fossil animals isn't the 
best course of action in my humble opinion. (GSP put feathers on his dinosaurs 
for years, and his remark a while back on the list about how he bets we will 
eventually find sinornithosaurs with great big glorious wings makes me smile.) 
As we all know full well, things are/are not preserved in odd ways, and the 
implications of this can be astounding. Wee little mammal fossils found with 
only strips of fur down their backs doesn't mean that they ran around with 
mohawks. Saber toothed cats found hairless at La Brea doesn't mean that !
they looked like Mr. Bigglesworth And really, if you want to get a little nuts 
about this (as in poking a bit of fun at the logic some use), the lack of soft 
tissue and integument preservation doesn't mean the fossils found didn't have 
muscles and skin! Call me wreckless if you want, but with a fairly ambiguous 
situation like this, I tend to think using a great deal of inginuity and 
imagination is in order. With the evidence we presently have, who can say for 
certain that you are either wrong or right? :-)

Kris