Re: MORE "Dinosaur Planet"dinosaurs!!!(This time with feathers)

["Mickey Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com>]

Okay, I couldn't resist being the first....
P.S. Sorry if I sound a bit confrontational, I've just done my fair share of
arguing against your viewpoint in the past.

TIMOTHY BRIDGEMAN wrote-

> The
> evidence for feathered dromaeosaurs,such as "Dave" and the recent "four
> winged dinosaur"is questionable to me,because they came from the same
source
> (even the same quarry)as the infamous"Archaeoraptor".The feather
impressions
> on the fossils may have been doctored prior to being sold at those mineral
> shows.

First, the "Archaeoraptor" specimen (Yanornis + Microraptor tail) has real
feather remains, so there is no history of faked feather remains from that
quarry.
Second, one of the feathered specimens of Microraptor was NOT purchased, but
was discovered by an expedition of the IVPP.
In addition, when the IVPP prepared the specimens, some feathers were
underneath the matrix, so were definitely not faked.  Unless you want to
call those paleontologists liers.
The Microraptor specimens also came from different localities, so they were
hardly from the same quarry as "Archaeoraptor".
This was all explained in Xu et al. (2003), you should really read the paper
before you question the evidence.

> There are ways to do this as demonstrated on a cheesy show made by
> Arthur C.Clark,claiming that Archaeopteryx was a hoax.* (We all know that
> claim was not true,but a method of making feather impressions on fossils
> using modern feathers was shown.)

The feather preservation is completely different in the Yixian Formation,
where carbonaceous material is preserved, not just impressions like the
skeletal Archaeopteryx specimens.  So the same methods wouldn't work, and it
would be INCREDIBLY difficult to fake the feathers.

> The only Chinese fossils with feather
> impressions that I totally beleve are those like Caudipteryx and
> Protarchaeopteryx,which I am not totally convinced are dinosaurs,rather
than
> primitive flightless birds.

Mind giving reasons why you think they are birds?  Or more importantly why
you think they aren't dinosaurs?
I've shot down Feduccia's, Martin's, Czerkas' and more....

> As for the "protofeathers"of the likes of
> Sinosauropteryx, I believe that there is as much of a chance that the
traces
> of what appears to be some kind of integuement are actually traces of
> decayed connective tissue.

Lingham-Soliar's recent papers on this have not been well accepted, to say
the least.
A couple questions....
1. Why do other Yixian vertebrates not show collagen remains?  Not
Psittacosaurus, or Hyphalosaurus, or the turtles, or mammals....
2. Why are the collagen remains of coelurosaurs nearly identical to
preserved Yixian bird and dromaeosaur feathers?  What's the reason to
believe they are collagen?

Mickey Mortimer