RE: Modern feathers on a non-avian dinosaur - today's Nature

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Edels
> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 5:15 PM
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: RE: Modern feathers on a non-avian dinosaur - today's Nature
>
>
> Here's where to get CNN's version of it:
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/03/06/feathered.dinosaur/index.html
>
> One weird thing in the article: "It is the third dromaeosaur EVER
> discovered." (emphasis mine).  This doesn't quite seem right to me :-).

Perhaps they left off "...in the Yixian."  That might arguably be a fair
statement of the taxonomy of Yixian theropods: _Sinornithosaurus_ (probably
including "Dave"), _Microraptor_, this new guy.

> Also, they mention _Archeoraptor_ and say "Authenticity was called into
> question and critics claimed that only one side of the slab had been
> studied. Critics also said that pieces of the fossil could have
> been cobbled
> together and that the specimen included more than one animal. "
>
> This seems to me to be slightly one-sided, and lacking
> information (i.e. the
> fact that nearly ALL paleontologists that have studied the specimen agree
> that it is 2 separate animals [I think I remember 1 holdout]).

I agree; Jeff Hecht's article (among others) were considerably better.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796