Re: Hoatzin & Archaeopteryx

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Mickey Mortimer (Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com) wrote:

<I'd be willing to bet hoatzins also have many fused skull elements,
toothless maxillae and dentaries, reduced temporal arches, heterocoelous
cervicals, a pygostyle, fused (meta)carpal and (meta)tarsal elements, a
trochanteric crest, reduced fibulae, no fifth metatarsal, an alula, and
plenty of other characters of living birds absent in Archaeopteryx.>

  If *Microraptor gui* (= *Microraptor zhaoianus?*) had a tuft of
subparallel feathers arising from the first, alular digit, then so it is
more likely than not that *Archaeopteryx* would have had one as well, and
this tuft might be termed an alula, or "protoalula" and the only
difference in it from other birds its its relative size to the rest of the
wing and the relative size of the digit it's attached to.

  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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