Well put. As Mickey Rowe has said before on this list, the easiest person
to fool is oneself. It's very easy to promulgate a plausible scenario that
"makes sense" to you - but how does it stack up against alternative
scenarios?
Plus - I can't help saying something that I think bears repeating every
once in a while: There is a great deal in palaeontology that we can never
know.
We will never know, for example, if ANY extinct species actually flew,
including fossil neornithine birds. The most we can legitimately say is
that they had an anatomical setup that permitted flight, and of course it
is parsimonious to assume that fossil neornithines flew in the absence of
evidence to the contrary. But this is still an assumption, and an
assumption that grows weaker the more basal you go on the avian family
tree. We cannot even know for certain that pterosaurs flew, though it
seems vanishingly unlikely that they did not.
Therefore when it comes to less obvious speculations, there are going to be
a good many that can never be dealt with in a purely "scientific" way. For
example, you can say that the fossils indicate that certain types of
behaviour would have been possible, but except in unusual cases you cannot
say that those behaviours were actually exhibited (exceptions might be
footprint evidence, fossils showing brooding, fighting or stomach contents,
and (in my opinion) feather fossils in a condition that implies grooming or
preening behaviour).
My big problem is when writers, scientific or otherwise, fail to be clear
on this point and make positive statements. With great respect to Greg
Paul, whose work I admire, when he says (as he did on this list) that "some
dromaeosaurs flew" he is falling into this trap - and it is a trap that
gives palaeontology a bad name. He may very well mean "Some dromaeosaurs
had adaptations that would have permitted flight", or even "some
dromaeosaurs exhibit features consistent with flight and hard to explain in
any other way", but that is not the same thing.
I may be being persnickety, but I believe precision of language is crucial
even in popularizing science. "Some dromaeosaurs may have been able to
fly", or even "I believe some dromaeosaurs flew", would not trouble me in
the least; positive assertions that no one can prove bother me quite a bit.
--
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