Re: The Peters Strikes Back (pterosaurs)

["Jaime Headden" <ja_headden@qilong.8m.com>]

Dave Peters (davidrpeters@earthlink.net) wrote:

<Then someone in Karlsruhe gets the steak dinner. Get us together! I'm 
metaphorically holding my breath, but previous such examples
have not proven valid. I am _not_ being sarcastic when I say: I would genuinely 
like to see a deep wing membrane. And a pteroid
sticking out anteriorly insitu. And a plantigrade dimorphodontid track. And a 
pterosaur egg. (Wouldn't we all!) Evidence is what
it's all about. >

  Hmm. Though I am aware that Dave does not regard this as evidence, *Sordes 
pilosus* shows just such an integumentary attachment.
Dave has attempted to reason through a hypothetical and irregular 
de-deformation of the holotype that the "uropatagium" was part of
the trailing edge of the wing, in his reply to Unwin and Bakhurina, 1998. So 
far, this is extraordinary itegumental preservation
where dessication and detachment of a whole piece of skin remained with the 
corpse, but the process of detachment did not "loose"
the material. This is why, even when the elements were associated in a form of 
"life-pose," and _rigor mortis_ corrected for, the
same skin flap should not move the same distance as proposed by Dave and be 
part of a narrow-chord wing. Similarly, it is unlikely
this skin is not part of the uropatagium, and the other side of the wing seeks 
to indicate that the ankle or shin was involved in
the cheiropatagium, contra his evidence for, within the dark mass of preserved 
carbonized integument, a secondary, "narrow-chord"
trailing edge. The evidence is not secure, I think, to argue that *Sordes* did 
not have a narrow-chord wing without taking unknowns
into account, such as the spread-wing shape of the patagia. Maybe that steak 
dinner should go to Sharov's shade....

  Cheers,

  Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take. We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so
hard to do.  We should all learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around 
us rather than zoom by it.

  "Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)