Re: Dr. Holtz' secret: Buitreraptor gonzalezorum

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

That's an artifact of a press release that implied Pangea split up  180 million 
years ago. Taking that claim seriously would have predated Archaeopteryx by 30 
million years, and thus pushed the split between dromeosaurs and Archaeopteryx 
back to at least 180 million years ago. But that was a misconception in the 
press release; the link between the northern and southern continents may not 
have broken until 150 million years ago. As you note, flying dromeosaurs could 
simply have flown over the water. Non-flying dromeosaurs might have island 
hopped. -- Jeff Hecht



At 4:36 PM -0400 10/12/05, dinoboygraphics@aol.com wrote:
>A curious note from Msnbc: "But the Buitreraptor fossil in South America, 
>which dates back 90 million years and closely resembles fossils from the 
>North, means one of two things: Either dromaeosaurs existed when Pangea was 
>intact, or the newfound Buitreraptor and its northern look-alikes evolved 
>separately yet with remarkably similar results."
>
>Not that I'm the biggest fan of secondary flightless dromeaosaurs, but doesn't 
>this discussion leave out the possibility that Buitreraptor's ancestors flew 
>to the southern hemisphere in the Early Cretaceous?
>
>David Marjanovic wrote: "This is probably what HP Scott Hartman will present 
>as an impressively
>complete troodontid at the SVP meeting."
>