Re: Feathers on Bloody Everything

["Allan Edels" <edels@email.msn.com>]

Josh (et al):

    No problem with holding off official judgment of the ideas - until we
have more facts.  No need to do more work than necessary correcting early
ideas.

    As to the "wow, cool!" point, I wasn't trying to imply that you (or you
and Tom and whoever else was with you) were taking the idea as your own
original one.  (You had initially pointed out that the idea was an older
idea that finally had SOME real evidence behind it).  I was merely reporting
that Jack Horner had mentioned it many years ago - with absolutely NO
evidence behind it.  He emphasized that point at the time, and was merely
speculating, using his reasoning abilities.  I thought the idea was cool
enough to remember an isolated conversation from 1986 - and yes it was over
several beers! (including at least one Mt. Rainer beer for everyone -
someone had brought a case back east from Montana).

    Later,

        Allan Edels


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Smith <smithjb@sas.upenn.edu>
To: dinosaur@usc.edu <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Date: Tuesday, October 06, 1998 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: Feathers on Bloody Everything


>
>Allan Edels wrote:
>>
>> OK, Josh - I agree that there shouldn't be REAL FEATHERS on every
dinosaur,
>> however, I like with the idea that proto-feathers of some sort might be
on
>> every dinosaur - unless converted into real feathers or other structures
>> (such as George suggests).
>>
>>     Also, I had posted previously that Jack Horner once said that he
thought
>> that all dinos had downy feathers, which they lost as they grew older.
(He
>> didn't specify ALL, but he implied it.  This was back around 1986 - over
>> pizza and beer in New Jersey).
>>
> Sure, both of these points.  All I am saying is that we need to
>remember the key words in these two paragraphs, might and thought.  There
SNIP
> I know it is hard to wait for data supporting our ideas to come
>out, especially in VP where collecting and prep takes so damn much time.
>There wasn't a lot of data to support the sauropods in the swamps ideas
>either, but look how that took off.  I guess I would just support going a
>little slower and not having to later correct four out of six things
>that I did.
>
> And I wasn't implying that I had come up with the hypothesis that
>juvenile dinosaurs might have a feather-like integument, just that the
>idea is really interesting now that there is actually enough evidence for
us to
>actually entertain the thought.  It was a "wow, gee, isn't this cool"
>point, not a "listen to this new Idea that I have, aren't I so cool" point.
>
>
>--
>__________________________
>Josh Smith
>University of Pennsylvania
>Department of Earth and Environmental Science
>471 Hayden Hall
>240 South 33rd Street
>Philadelphia, PA  19104-6316
>(215) 898-5630 (Office)
>(215) 898-0964 (FAX)
>smithjb@sas.upenn.edu
>
>