RE: Yet more on pterosaur quad arm posture

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

Ah, I see.

Yeah, not buying that...

On Thu, July 11, 2013 5:59 pm, David Marjanovic wrote:
>> > > they climb up there
>> >
>> > I bet this refers to WAIR. A seriema walking up a tree trunk like a
>> nuthatch is really hard to imagine.
>>
>> But as I was saying, this referred to the mammalogist's definition. So
>> climbing (with claws or with prehensile feet or what have you) is the
>> way to get up in the trees.
>>
>> So again: to mammalogists, arboreal vs. scansorial is more about WHERE
>> the animal lives & feeds vs. rests, whereas to ornithologists it is
>> about how they get there.
>
> ...Not what I'm saying. I'm not talking about whether seriemas should be
> classified as arboreal, scansorial or anything; I'm expressing incredulity
> at the explicit claim that they climb up low trees instead of flying
> there.
>


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
                        College Park, MD 20742 USA