Feathered dinosaur in NY Times

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

This is the THIRD time I.ve posted this to the DML. Dunno why it keeps 
getting lost. I haven't received a single email from the dinosaur mailing 
list since about noon Friday March 8. AOL strikes again. It's really 
infuriating.

Here is a quote from today's New York Times on the feathered dinosaur from 
China described in this week's Nature. It's Mark Norell talking:

"These modern-looking feathers," he added, "show definitively that they 
evolved in dinosaurs before the emergence of birds and flight, and that 
therefore feathers are not an adaptation for flight."

Alas, this is quite untrue. He fails to take into account the possibility 
that the feathered dinosaur was secondarily flightless. Feathers may or may 
not have appeared for flight, but because it might be a secondarily 
flightless form, this specimen can say nothing definitive about the origin of 
feathers.