RE: Sinosauropteryx feathers?

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@rogers.com>]

At 09:31 PM 03/12/02 -0500, MariusRomanus@aol.com wrote:
> I wonder if a MALE bird of paradise was to be fossilized, would those 
> radically wild display plumes hidden deep beneath their regular old 
> plumage be clearly preserved? Would we ever find the bird to begin with? 
> My best educated guesses are "No"...

Well, I'm coming into this debate a bit late (having just returned from 
several weeks in Chile), but I am not sure that this is necessarily a good 
guess.  First of all, you have to distinguish between those bird fossils 
that do not preserve any integumentary structures at all (the vast 
majority) and those which do.  Of the latter, I would suspect that the 
larger remiges, rectrices and display plumes (if present) may well be more 
likely to fossilize than contour feathers which may be less robust - this 
is probably the case for Archaeopteryx.  And of course there are many 
specimens (I gather) of Confuciusornis that clearly show remarkable long 
tail plumes on some individuals (presumably, though not necessarily, males 
or at least mature adults) but not on others.  If this sort of thing can 
show up on a Cretaceous fossil I see no reason why it could not do so on a 
more recent one, given the appropriate conditions.

However, that is not - as I gather - really relevant to this issue.  As I 
understand it the question is what kind of integumentary structures 
Sinosauropteryx had, and the suggestion is that the "protofeathers" we can 
see may have been replaced or augmented by "modern" feather types on other 
individuals.  I suppose this is possible but if so it would be most 
extraordinary.  We are not talking here about a few extra display feathers 
but an entirely different, basic class of feather otherwise only known for 
sure in clades that do not include Sinosauropteryx and that presumably 
represent a later stage in feather evolution.  For the speculation given 
here to be correct we would have to assume not only that "modern" feathers 
appeared much more basally than is currently believed (which is certainly 
possible, but there is no evidence for it), and that these basic feather 
types were only present on certain individuals (something that we do not 
see on ANY living or fossil bird - I know of no bird in which only one sex 
has down or bristles, for example).

Of course an artist can do anything he likes; he can restore a feathered 
Triceratops if he wants to.  However, I am not sure that it is helpful to 
our understanding of what a fossil creature may have been like (surely one 
purpose of restoration) to give it features that are not only unknown in 
the fossil (restoration would be impossible if you couldn't do that) but 
for which there is reasonable evidence suggesting that they were not present.

PS - As far as I know there are no known fossils of birds of paradise.

>

--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2          mailto:ornstn@rogers.com