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Re: Primary feather stiffness in Mesozoic birds
- To: Dinosaur Mailing List <dinosaur@usc.edu>
- Subject: Re: Primary feather stiffness in Mesozoic birds
- From: Mike Keesey <keesey@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:22:58 -0800
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On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A new paper not yet mentioned on the DML:
>
> WANG, X., NUDDS, R. L., PALMER, C. and DYKE, G. J. (2012)
> Size scaling and stiffness of avian primary feathers: implications for
> the flight of Mesozoic birds.
[...]
> Adding fossil measurement data to our DFA showed
> that Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis do not overlap with extant
> birds. This strongly suggests that the bending stiffness of their
> primary feathers was different to extant birds and provides further
> evidence for distinctive flight styles and likely limited flight
> ability in Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis.
So ... were their feathers bendier or stiffer than modern bird
feathers? (I don't have access to the paper.)
--
T. Michael Keesey
http://tmkeesey.net/