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Re: New integument paper



Meor Hakif (hakif23@yahoo.com) wrote:

<Evolution of birds: ichthyosaur integumental fibers conform to
dromaeosaur protofeathers
 Theagarten Lingham-Soliar
 Online first article, Naturwissenscaften>

  Unfortunately, Mickey Mortimer alreaqdy mentioned this sad, sad paper.
It's okay as long as you want to ignore earlier papers describing the
feathers of near-avian dinosaurs like *Caudipteryx* and NGMC 91 ("Dave",
i.e., *Sinornithosaurus* sp.). However, if you think that *Caudipteryx* is
NOT a bird, then this paper is a swing and a miss. While Lingham-Soliar
adequately describes the means in which collagenous fibers can mimic
feather-like bipinnate structures in theory, he fails to note this in the
fossil record to support his claims for this in the Liaoning specimens,
prove how *Archaeopteryx* does NOT follow the same condition, or as Mickey
wrote earlier, show how this epaxial colagen formed from frayed tendons
can appear atop the skull of *Sinornithosaurus*, *Sinosauropteryx*, etc..
Beyond this, Lingham-Solier indicated that dromaeosaurids have ossified
tendons in their tails (recent analyses are ignored where there are
proposed to be elongated processes of the non-tendenous prozygapophyseal
processes of the tail, which are distinct from those they are near,
forked, do not fuse to other bones, etc.) and how this and those tendons
found in some ornithischians (forming a unique lattice found nowhere else
in the fossil or extant record) show that all dinosaurs (including
theropods and sauropods) evidence the likelyhood of showing the "feathery
integument" or "protofeathers" are frayed collagen, _sensu_ Ruben et al.
way back when. This analysis is thus flawed by various inferrences that
were, at the time (as Mickey pointed out) outdated, or the lack of
referrence of year and several-year-old analyses that were referrence, but
their data ignored. This includes *Caudipteryx*, etc., which admittedly
Ruben et al. and Jones et al. support as a non-dinosaurian bird.

  But that's my take on it. Mickey says this paper was better left
unpublished. But it does offer a taphonomic process as evidenced in
Lingham-Soliar's research on dolphin, shark, and ichthyosaur skin, that
can provide a test to show exactly why the Liaoning integument is NOT
collagenic in origin; one can either publish a contradiction, or simply
ignore the work -- there are likely to be papers from Ruben et al. on this
matter referrencing the paper, but who knows.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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