On 10/8/06, Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's at all off the mark. Neornithean birds, as far as it is known, show no evidence of losing their feathery body covering through natural selection. But things may have been different for their non-avian cousins, back in the Mesozoic. It is impossible to frame an evolutionary scenario that explains the distribution of feathers in non-avian Theropoda without invoking either multiple losses or multiple gains of feathers for at least part of the body.
Wouldn't the naked faces of vultures be an instance of partial feather loss within Neornithes?
-- Andreas Johansson
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?