RE: chicken wing-claws

["Patrick Norton" <ptnorton@msn.com>]

For more on this, see a post of mine to the dinolist in 1998 at
http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/1998Jul/msg01020.html

PTN

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu] On Behalf
Of Jon Barber
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 8:36 PM
To: Dinosaur Mailing List
Subject: Re: chicken wing-claws

At 05:23 PM 4/2/2004 +0100, Renato wrote:
>To the list members:
>
>A few years back when I started to get a little more serious on
dinosaurs, I
>decided to check for myself if chickens would complie with their
dinosaurian
>origin, i. e., if they would have claws like their relative
Ophistocomus.
>In fact Gallus retains wingclaws all through it's life as does the
Muschovy
>duck, Cairina moschata.
>I'm just stating this to find out if anyone here knew about this.

I just discovered this recently myself, although it seems that in the
adult 
only the alular digit has a claw. Feduccia's "The Origin and Evolution
of 
Birds" has a picture on the bottom half of page 19. Also, Fisher (1940) 
lists a wide variety of birds that have claws (as opposed to spurs) on 
their wings.

Feduccia, A. 1996. The Origin and Evolution of Birds. New Haven: Yale 
university Press.

Fisher, H. I. 1940. The Occurrence of Vestigial Claws on the Wings of 
Birds. American Midland Naturalist 23:234-243.