Re: Jurassic Park IV

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

> Yes it did. The opening sequence w/ the little girl being attacked by  the 
> "compies(Compsognathus)" was a variation of the beginning of the  first 
> book. In the book, however a partial or whole(MY memory's  fuzzy) specimen 
> was sent to a lab were I believe it was originally  thought to be a sort 
> of basilisk lizard.

Yes -- complete with a description of squamate-specific details of the skin. 
Evidently, someone here thought dinosaurs are "reptiles" and squamates are 
the default reptiles. <sigh>

(Crichton is in very good company with this line of thought, however. How 
often has *Probainognathus* been presented as transitional to the mammalian 
jaw joint condition because its surangular participates in the jaw joint? 
That's _normal_. In all amniotes (and many other tetrapods) except derived 
mammals _and lepidosaurs_, the surangular makes up the lateral 1/3 of the 
jaw joint. Or think of the various attempts to interpret skull kinesis into 
gorgonopsians, aïstopod amphibians, anthracosaurs, ornithischians, 
oviraptorosaurs, *Archaeopteryx*... so clearly squamate-based that some have 
proposed mesokinesis in *Archaeopteryx*, meaning a joint between the 
frontals and the parietals.)