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