Re: Feduccia ORIGIN

["Tim Williams" <T.Williams@cclru.randwick.unsw.edu.au>]

Stan Friesen wrote:
 
> He seems to be ignoring the possibility of a long-forelimbed, arboreal
> *dinosaur*.
> 
> Long-forelimbed we have, and in forms apparently close to the ancestry
> of birds.  We call them deinonychids.  Other, slightly more distant,
> examples include troodontids and ornithomimids.  

Not to mention the very long-armed therizinosauroids (although no 
none, apart from the late great Lev Nessov, ever seriously 
contemplated that therizinosaurids lived in trees.)   

> To me a small arboreal troodontid or deinonychosaur seems quite
> possible. (In fact I am not sure I can confidently say _Troodon_
> itself is NOT arboreal).

I can visualise these and other small theropods - _Ornitholestes_, 
_Troodon_, _Deinonychus_ - leaping up into trees and recilning among 
the branches, maybe with a haunch of young hypsilophodont in their 
jaws.  But I don't think an arboreal lifestyle was their raison 
d'etre ("Oh Tish - You spoke French!!").  If leopards can do it, why 
not coelurosaurs?  
 
 
Tim Williams