flight origins

[theropod@garnet.berkeley.edu (John R. Hutchinson)]

I said:
>>        The big picture conjured by BCF just doesn't make sense to me, even
>>without any speculative stories to explain the origin of flight, which
>>(sans fossil evidence) are just stories, and inconsequential to the
>>phylogeny (which must come first).
>>                        John R. Hutchinson

Ronald Orenstein replies:

> The arguments that I and others have raised here on flight vs.
>gliding, say, have nothing to do with the phylogeny because we all agree
>that the first bird ancestors must have looked and acted pretty much like,
>say, Compsognathus whether they were Jurassic dinosaurs, Triassic protobirds
>or what have you - in other words the arguments fit both theories.  So
>despite the headings I do not think we have really been discussing BCF vs
>BADD lately.

Agreed; I just said the above to maek sure people weren't confusing flight
evolution discussions with phylogenetic flight origin discussions. The
whole discussion has become a complex web of tangents; I'm just keeping the
common ground visible, as you are.

                        John R. Hutchinson
                  Evolving Evolutionary Biologist
                 Department of Integrative Biology
                  3060 Valley Life Sciences Bldg
                University of California - Berkeley
                        Berkeley, CA 94720
                          (510) 643-2109
         http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/people/jrh/homepage.html