Re: Sinosauropteryx

[Mike Hanson <mhanson54@comcast.net>]

Having taken a look at the illustrations, this thing does not look 
"bald" to me at all. There are some fairly nice patches of 
proto-feathers along the tail and near the hand which are conveniently 
dismissed by Lingham-Soliar et al. as "collagen fibres" (which really 
isn't surprising at all). If they are going to dismiss all fibres in 
these fossils as collagen fibres, why is it that we do not see such 
structures in specimens of taxa that are not as close to birds? I also 
like how they try to dismiss the structures as forming some sort of a 
Petersian "frill" running down the creature's back and forming some kind 
of fin on the thing's tail. By these criteria, the structures near the 
manus would form a sort of flipper. Are we now back to that 
absurd-looking aquatic compsognathid again?

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Mike Hanson
Email: mhanson54@comcast.net
Website (The Pterosauria): http://www.archosauria.org/pterosauria/
Dinosauricon Art Gallery: http://dino.lm.com/artists/display.php?name=mike