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Re: Fwd: re: pterosaurs and dinosaurs (long)
At 08.21 04/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
At 10:41 AM 04/10/02 +0200, Silvio Renesto wrote:
Longisquama. <snip> shares a lot of functional similarities (most likely
convergences) with some drepanosaurids, but all may be due to similar
arboreal adaptation. I am very sad that the posterior half of the body
is unknown.
<snip> I still wonder whether there is any chance at all that its peculiar
"plumes" (which look wildly out of place to my eye) are not really part of
the specimen but some sort of weird leaf that it was lying on. Does
anyone think this is possible?
There are some close ups in an ABSRD paper in Science 288 (2000), they
seem not common leafs even if isolated findings were initially taken for
leafs (with some doubt) before the finding of the skeleton. Original
description speaks about paired appendages hinged together in some way ,
while subsequent works discard the hinge retaining the pairing. As
correctly noted by Unwin, the plume/leaf like scales (or whatever they
are) are misplaced thus it is hard to tell how (if?) they are inserted in
the epaxial musculature. Sharov original drawings are far from helpful
and I had not the chance to check the specimen first hand or even a very
good close up of the head+shoulder region, thus I cannot go beyond
personal feelings, which are: too much things around/in the shoulder
region, something escapes us there.
All the best
Silvio Renesto
_
The voice from the lake then asked
"which is the strangest thing of all?"
Judisthira replied
"Every day men see other men die, they see the chariots with the corpses
and the fires, yet they keep living as they were immortals, this is the
strangest thing of all"
(from Mahabharatha)
Silvio Renesto
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra
Università degli Studi di Milano
Via Mangiagalli 34
I 20133 Milano
Italy
phone +39-02-50315511
fax +39-02-50315494
e-mail: renesto@mailserver.unimi.it
Silvio.Renesto@unimi.it
have a look at our Triassic website at
http://users.unimi.it/vertpal/index.htm