Re: Concavenator has two humps

[Ronald Orenstein <ron.orenstein@rogers.com>]

Well, living birds do that of course!  most living birds have scales on their 
legs, and some species with feathered tarsi or even feet have close relatives 
with scaled legs implying that the evolutionary shift from one to the other is 
not a great one. 

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 8, 2010, at 8:53 PM, GSP1954@aol.com wrote:

Both the text and the life illustration of Concavenator show a single hump 
just before the hips. But the tail base neural spines are also elongated 
while those over the pelvis were apparently not, so there are two humps (there 
may be a less extreme hip dip in Ouranosaurus). The arrangement tends to 
favor that dinosaur sails were for display rather than supporting fat deposits 
in at least some cases. 

Hopefully this example will establish that the presence of scales on a 
dinosaur specimen does not exclude the presence of feathers elsewhere on the 
animal. And with bristles etc showing up hither and yon in the group it is 
highly plausible that feathers go way back into basal theropods - as per the 
old 
Sarah Landry feathered Coelophysis (=Syntarsus) in Bakker's 75 Sci Amer 
article.   

GSPaul</HTML>