Re: FYI -- Microraptor gui, Burnham and Alexander, PNAS...

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

--- On Tue, 1/26/10, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
> Subject: Re: FYI -- Microraptor gui, Burnham and Alexander, PNAS...
> To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 2:58 PM
> >  http://dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?id=298
> > 
> >  Twelfth post and beyond, required reading for
> any one going to
> >  comment on the "impossible" leg-sprawling flight
> posture of the
> >  _Microraptor_ model.
> 
> That's a case of "wait for the paper that won't even be
> begun anytime soon".
> 
> Importantly, however, those posts explicitly don't argue
> for the 180°-sprawled pose that Burnham et al. wanted to
> squeeze *M.* into. I was there at their talk at the SVP
> meeting of 2008, and they had a reconstruction where the
> femoral head pointed not into the acetabulum but ventrally
> (vertically downwards), and the trochanteric crest touched
> the ilium, leaving _no_ space for the very muscles that
> would have pulled the legs up into this pose! That was
> cringeworthy.

So! What is best guess? Life-style centered around steep predatory glide-paths 
requiring extreme late-glide maneuverability (ie, braking and/or directional 
adjustments to target movement)?