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Of course nonavian dinosaurs could fly - duh
Who could have predicted it? The mainstream, cladistic based consensus saw
the origin of dinosaur-avian flight as a fairly simple affair with nonavian,
nonflying, ground running Jurassic theropods learning to fly via
Archaeopteryx type birds from the ground up. So now we have an apparently
arboreal,
sickle-clawed deinonychosaur with airfoils from earlier than Archaeopteryx,
with the implication that latter nonvolant deinonychosaurs were secondarily
flightless? Yes, who could have predicted such a thing?
Oh, that's right, I DID! Starting back in 84 in the Mesozoic Terrestrial
Ecosystems Symposium volume, in 88 in PDW, and 02 in DA. Was not really that
hard, evolution normally being a complex series of events. No one should be
surprised.
So let's not have the standard simplistic press/media stories about how
this is all so surprising and no one could have or did think of it.
Since someone did.
GSPaul
www.gspauldino.com
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