LINGHAM-SOLIAR ON FIBRES

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Re: Lingham-Soliar's recent paper, I have to say I'm really 
surprised. Given that Solly is clearly familiar with the skin 
fibres present in ichthyosaurs and extant aquatic vertebrates, 
I find it mightily odd that he could conclude that the 
structures seen on theropods are at all similar. With 
colleagues I was actually planning to write a formal 
response to Feduccia's claim (_Auk_ 119, 1187-1201) that 
the fibres of ichthyosaurs are homologous to those of 
theropods, and the plan was to employ Solly as someone 'on 
our side'. Alas I guess this is not to be.

For previous critiques of the idea that the internal skin fibre 
meshes of ichthyosaurs are anything to do with those of 
theropods see..

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2003Feb/msg00178.html
http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2002Aug/msg00090.html

-- 
Darren Naish
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth UK, PO1 3QL

email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
tel: 023 92846045