Dragons on Animal Planet March 20

[Ralph Miller <ralph.miller@alumni.usc.edu>]

Of course this is not quite on-topic, but the creators of "Walking With 
Dinosaurs" are taking on dragons in a program which will be called (what 
else?) "Dragons."

Of interest to our list is the take that bipedal dragons inhabited the 
Cretaceous and evolved into flying dragons by the Late Cretaceous.  I 
suppose you'll have to watch the show to learn how we got four legged 
dragons with wings, requiring the addition of two appendages to the 
traditional tetrapod model.  Do dragons constitute a monophyletic taxon? 
See the show to find out.
http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/dragons.html

It looks like a fun show, but paleontologists and docents should brace 
themselves, as spectators of this material may require debriefings to set 
them straight on certain aspects of the fossil record.

--------Ralph W. Miller III