Re: Campbell's even crazier than a MANIAC? (archeopteryx climbing)

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Augusto Haro" <augustoharo@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 8:39 PM

> David: that *Archaeopteryx* is relatively basal and *Microraptor* not so
> much is important in reconstructing the ancestral state for Aves, with
> respect to the possession of long metatarsal feathers or not. [...]
> This all indicates there is no evidence for a *
> Tetrapteryx* stage in the origin of avian flight.

Fine.

> Applying the Extant Phylogenetic Bracket approach (Witmer, 1995), we 
> should
> infer, if there is no compelling anatomical evidence against, that 
> abduction
> was possible at full retraction not only in *Microraptor*, but in other
> dinosaurs as well, as it is present in their closest living relatives,
> Crocodylia and Neornithes.

But the EPB does not apply here. It applies to things we cannot directly 
derive from the fossils and have to infer using extant taxa. It's a 
parsimony approach.

> However, even when Cracraft 71' proved abduction coupled with full
> retraction was possible for birds,

For Neornithes, you mean.