Re: Microraptor claws, anyone?

[Ben Creisler <bscreisler@yahoo.com>]

From: Ben Creisler
bscreisler@yahoo.com
 
 
 
A quick follow-up. I reread the text of the article. Although the photo caption 
does not state the specimen, the text reads as follows:
 
For cf. Microraptor sp. (LVH0026), a short wave ultra-violet lamp (Mineralight 
UVS-54) was used to enhance the horny sheath of the manual claw. Using Adobe 
Photo-shop software, image files were created and best-fit circles were overlain 
onto the entire claw inclusive of the sheath. Lines were drawn from the tip of 
the horny sheath to the base of the ungual using Adobe Illustrator. The angle 
of inner claw curvature was measured by overlaying lines that touched both ends 
of the claw and ran as parallel to the base of the claw as possible. These 
lines met in the centre of the circle, creating the angle of inner claw 
curvature (Fig. 1). The degree of inner claw curvature was measured using a 
protractor. These results were added to a previously published dataset of 
modern birds generated by Feduccia (1993). All the data was plotted onto a 
graph of claw arc (degrees) versus species (see Table 1).