Re: Archosaurs of a feather

["Scott Hartman" <scott_hartman@hotmail.com>]

    I don't want to disparage one of the more distinguished journals of our 
era, but I'm pretty aghast that the Longisquaa paper was accepted for 
publication.  In the paper the only link of the Longisquama appendages to 
feathers is due to their "plumaceous" nature.  But rather than a detailed 
justification of why the appendage is plumaceous (which you might think 
would be the meat and potatoes of such a paper), they simply assert that it 
IS plumaceous,  and then discuss the implications of this "finding."  This 
kind of lack of substantiation of claims is unacceptible as science.  For a 
much better example, check out the description of the Sinornithosaurus 
integumentary structures in the newest Nature.
    The lack of morphological substantiation wasn't the only inexcusable 
omission in the Ruben, et al. Science paper.  Other workers have cited 
(since at least the 70's) the Longisquama appendages as possible primitive 
insulation.  Heck, Bob Bakker in his Scientific American article (Dinosaur 
Renaisance) used it as evidence that insulation might have been widespread 
throughout the Archosauria.  None of these citations, nor their published 
rebuttals, were mentioned in the recent paper, and so 3 decades worth of 
previous discussion on the topic were completly ignored.

Scott
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com