Re: Are birds really smarter than non-avian dinosaurs?

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

--- ptnorton <ptnorton@suscom-maine.net> schrieb am Mo, 26.5.2008:

> Von: ptnorton <ptnorton@suscom-maine.net>
> Betreff: Re: Are birds really smarter than non-avian dinosaurs?
> An: david.marjanovic@gmx.at, "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Datum: Montag, 26. Mai 2008, 23:49
> I believe Gould said it was a margin note in one of
> Darwin's journals. This 
> phrase is reworked a bit by Darwin in his section on
> development and 
> embryology in the Origin (ch. 14) in which he wrote
> "...it is hardly 
> possible to define clearly what is meant by the
> organisation being higher or 
> lower."  Unfortunately, having said that, he then went
> on (in the next 
> sentence) to write that "(B)ut no one probably will
> dispute that the 
> butterfly is higher than the caterpillar."


If there is any way at all to say "higher" or "lower" in evolution, it is 
precisely that: as defined by time. He was certainly *more* correct than most 
who'd use these terms, even if he was not really correct.

But that of course means that today's huzmans are as "high up" as every single 
bacterium in their lower intestines. And in the scope of the original question: 
each and every dino (avian or not) at the time of the Big Impact was just as 
"high up" as any other at that time - because they all had progressed *the 
same* distance in time from the original dino ancestor.


Eike


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