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Re: Campbell's even crazier than a MANIAC? (archeopteryx climbing)

----- Original Message -----
From: "don ohmes" <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 1:56 AM

Question: if you were going to attempt to falsify an
arboreal origin
for flight in a given group, how would you go about it?

I wouldn't. Way too hard.

You have missed the point of this question. Ideas that are not falsifiable are, you see, utterly worthless. The basic question of science is "if I were wrong, how would I know?"; if you were wrong about an arboreal origin for flight in any of the four clades that have evolved flight, how would you find that out?

Besides, my argument is that Arch. (or more to the point Arch. ancestors) could _definitely_ climb certain tree species (ie, they were not "mechanically constrained" from it), and those trees were common. 

Not among the fossils of Solnhofen & Eichstätt, though, AFAIK.

Teeth and four sets of claws will get you up a cycad.

Sure. Still, if you do that for a living, then having a few extra adaptations like actual grasping feet would help -- would be selected for. We find the opposite in the fossil record. How come?