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Re: fossil bird books



> __Where the 'bird's can't be dinosaur descendants idea came from':

The idea was still pretty common before this book, note reading the
various publications made by these individuals may be more useful than
reading Feduccia (1999). Note Hou et al. (1996) for one, the amount of
discussion generated on this list in response to it was fairly
impressive, quite honestly. :P


Sorry that statement was the heading for
2) Heilmann, G., 1927 - 'The origin of birds'

... which followed it, Sorry if my formatting confused anyone. I'm not used to formatting in plain text. '__' preceded topic headings which encompassed the books following it. I think Heilmann (1927) was the landmark work that secured this idea for the following 40-50 years as the mainstream view. Perhaps I didn't make that clear... though that's what I intended to say.

The way I see it is that Heilmann established the non-dino ancestry idea, and then Ostrom, Bakker and others started chipping away at it from 1969. Mid 1980's the debate fired up at the Eichstatt conference (book 10 in that email) and since then pro-dino ancestry could be regarded as becoming more the mainstream idea, particularly among the dinosaur specialists. Feduccia and like minded researchers represent a small group that hold on the once dominant non-dino ancestry idea.

Please note I'm not trying to start a debate on merits of either side, as I think its all been covered elsewhere and everyone I suspect is tired of it! I'm just putting it in an objective historical perspective.

cheers,
Chris


Nick Gardner

------------------------------------------------
Chris Glen
PhD candidate,
School of Biomedical Science
Anatomy and Developmental Biology Dept.,
University of Queensland
Q 4072, AUSTRALIA
Room: 418
Phone: (07) 3365 2720
Mob: 0408 986 301
Email: c.glen@.uq.edu.au
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~QQ>
~QQ>
One Late Mesozoic mammal to an other after a hard day of dodging
dinosaur feet and droppings, only to find their burrow trampled:
"Hey, a falling star, make a wish."