RE: Feathered Dragons: Studies on the Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds

["Tim Williams" <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Michael Mortimer"

> the absence of diplodocids there is no more proof of endemism of Late 
> Jurassic Chinese taxa than the presence of dicraeosaurids and absence of 
> camarasaurids in the Tendaguru is of endemism of Late Jurassic Tanzanian 
> taxa.

Excuse my nit-picking, but I remember reading that the Tendaguru sauropod 
_Janenschia_ might actually be a camarasaurid.

> Chatterjee and Templin, 2004. Feathered coelurosaurs from China: New light 
> on the arboreal origin of avian flight.
> Someone needs to tell the authors Sinosauropteryx has a posteriorly facing 
> glenoid, and could not extend its arms high over its back.  I also have a 
> hard time seeing it and Caudipteryx as arboreal, given their short arms, 
> unreversed halluces, straight unguals, etc..

_Caudipteryx_ looks about as comfortable sitting on a tree branch as an emu. 
 I'm all for putting _Microraptor_ and _Archaeopteryx_ up in the trees - 
but not every darned feathered coelurosaur belongs there!

> Wellnhofer, 2004. The plumage of Archaeopteryx: Feathers of a dinosaur? 
> 282-300.
[snip] >He brings
> up the feathers on Sinosauropteryx and Sinornithosaurus (though apparently 
> not noticing NGMC 91 has stage 3 feathers), and says "unless we take these 
> dinosaurs as living fossils of their time [because they preserve feathers 
> but lived later than Archaeopteryx], it is equally possible to assume that 
> integumentary filaments may have evolved independently and convergently in 
> a variety of reptilian groups not closely related to each other."

I'll never EVER understand why some authors are so keen to treat feathers as 
a special character, requiring a whole new set of evolutionary rules!

> Wellnhofer ends with the supposed impossibility of drawing a boundary 
> between reptile and bird, that cladistics doesn't solve the problem, etc..

*sigh*  Again, the what-is-a-bird issue appears to wrapped up in so much 
emotional and sentimental nonsense.  It is true that cladistics doesn't 
solve the problem - it bypasses it altogether, and rejects the typological 
baggage that dogged evolutionary biology for most of the twentieth century.

> Bakker and Bir, 2004. Dinosaur crime scene investigations: Theropod 
> behavior at Como Bluff, Wyoming, and the evolution of birdness. 301-342.

Sounds like it could be an interesting article.  Is it?

Thanks for the summary, Mickey.  Is the book worth buying, in your opinion?


Tim

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