Re: "Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth..."

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mickey Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 1:23 AM

> > the cormorant remains are more
> > convincing, but consist only of tarsometatarsi, and we don't know what a
> > tarsometatarsus of a basal flying hesperornithiform -- like what
> > *Potamornis* could well have been -- looked like.
>
> Very poor argument.  First of all, the specimens Hope (2002) describes are
a
> scapula and a femur.  She lists three scapular synapomorphies to support
> this, and six femoral ones (two of which are unique to the clade).

OK, more convincing, but scapulae and femora are unknown for lots of
Mesozoic bird clades...

> Metatarsal characters include hypotarsi with distinct crests and
> grooves (at least one enclosed by bone posteriorly), and a forked
> distal vascular foramen with two exits.

Don't know how I managed to overlook this.

> Third, we DO have what's interpreted as a basal flying hesperornithine
> tarsometatarsus-

Wow!

> As for the albatross, there's also Lonchodytes, which seems to be a
> procellariiform.

But not an albatross. :-) -- Procellariiforms in general are expected from
the presence of loons.