Re: Microraptor hanqingi, new species from China.

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 11:59 am, Augusto Haro wrote:
> I was recently reading a review paper on sloth paleobiology, in which
> they considered a hypothesis relative to mountain-climbing in certain
> "ground" sloths. I do not much know abouth how to detect a
> mountain-climbing ecomorphotype, but it seems to me that
> mountain-climbing is less complicated for parasagitally-constrained
> animals than tree-climbing, at least considering that there are more
> ungulates climbing mountains than climbing trees. If flight has to
> begin from upwards to downwards, you may not need trees if you can
> prove an animal is a mountain climber (if the presence of such an
> ecomorphotype can be evaluated in basal avialians). Besides, this may
> be tested if there is found some correlation between basal avialian
> findings and geological evidence of coeval ancient mountains...
>
The problem, of course, is that with rare exceptions mountains are exactly
where fossils are not formed. Or to put it another way, the sediment that
DOES entomb fossils are the ground up, transported, possibly dissolved and
reprecipitated waste of worn away ancient mountains.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu   Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661

Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117
                        University of Maryland
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