Re: Scales, hair, integumentary structure relationships?

[Erik Boehm <erikboehm07@yahoo.com>]

"That would just be two characters out of several hundred (assuming today's 
methods of phylogenetics). It would hardly matter."

You're assuming a well preserved specimin, fragmentary remains and a little 
luck preserving the primitive looking features could result in a specimin 
appearing quite anachronistic

> Well, I'd still say he's correct on the hoatzin:
> the juvenile state in 
> that taxon clearly has fingers that are more separated, and
> more strongly clawed (not to mention consistently clawed) than
> the usual condition we see in crown group birds.  Of course, this is
> partly turning on gene switches, and partially related to delay of
> developmental timing.

Well, by claws, I meant it in a more broad term, more than just the what tips 
the finger.
Most birds fuse all three fingers, right? the ancestral condition of 
maniraptors was not fused. The ancestral condition of the neoornithes has the 
fingers fused right? so those birds showing unfused fingers are showing an 
atavism?