From: StephanPickering@cs.com
Reply-To: StephanPickering@cs.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: handedness in dinosaurs/"birds"
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 07:01:22 EST
The fundamental work on lateralization of the brain in living dinosaurs
(what fading crayons in cyberia like to term "birds") is being conducted
by:
Irene Maxine Pepperberg (1981 to date), working with Psittacus erithacus;
Lesley Rogers (who uses Gallus gallus, and other taxa, including mammals,
in
her paradigms) in collaboration with Chao Deng and Gisela Kaplan. The
literature of parental care levels re: living avialian theropods is
immense,
ongoing, but the work of D.W. Mock is pivotal. So, too, is the work of
Graham Martin and Gadi Katzir re: visual fields of avialian theropods --
feeding, rearing of hatchlings, foraging/hunting, etc., are intertwined
with
surviving. Gart Zweers has done interesting work on how dinosaurs actually
drink/eat (viz. swallowing). Remarkable work on ultraviolet vision in the
dinosaurs one sees in heavily canopied rainforests is, also, available for
perusal. Of course, if one prefers to ignore post-K/T dinosaurs, pretend
they
are not Dinosauria, and shirk one's responsibilities as paleontologists to
extant ecomorphologies of dinosaurs, then the above suggestions for reading
may be a mental challenge. My own feeling is that Dinosauria = Aves, the
latter term to be re-defined as...what?