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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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