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Re: Sinosauropteryx: not fuzz-less (long)



Since the fibers of the neck are all clearly shortening substantially
to take up the slack created by the death pose, they have to either be
elastic fibers or muscle fibers.  The latter seem more likely to me, in
light their similarity to bird cervical musculature.   Lingham-Soliar
do not even attempt to explain these problems, and appear oblivious to
the fact that a dorsally located collagen frill should not exhibit
linnear fibers while the neck is retracted.

Good observation.

4) They also show a photograph (Fig 4) of the tail of NIGP 127587. Despite claims in the paper, the photograph shows a dorsally located layer (apparently) consisting of dino-fuzz style insulatory structures, and a ventral layer of rigorously parallel non-epidermal fibers that are clearly not dino-fuzz (the taphonomy does not distinguish between collagen/elastin/muscle fiber hypotheses in this specimen like it does in IVPP P12415). Unless it is a trick of the lighting, the photograph seems to indicate the epidermal/insulatory layer is preserved on a more superficial layer of rock than the collagen/muscles fibers are.

That's what I tried to say. I should have used "dorsal" and "superficial", too.


Worse yet, the proto-fuzz type fibers clearly extend down most
of the way past the tail, indicating it is not a midline stucture.

Yes. This reminds me of what I forgot to mention: Lingham-Soliar et al. are unhappy with the dinofuzz on the tail tip, claiming feathers should be shortest there because the skin there is expected to be thinner than elsewhere. Not only does this not follow, it also ignores tons of mammals that have -- presumably for insulation purposes -- rounded tail tips because the hairs on the tail tip are the longer than elsewhere on the tail.


5) Finally, the tone of the paper is inexcusible (to me).

The sentences on *Juravenator* remind me of... no, I probably can't say that onlist. I'll content myself to mention "banana" and "nightmare".