Re: Birds? Serious question

[Jeff Poling <jpoling@dinosauria.com>]

At 05:24 PM 6/18/97 -0700, Joshua Dyal wrote:
>Isn't that the whole point, though, that all these animals are much
>later than Archeopteryx?  If these new finds have more and more
>Archeopteryx like traits, that seems to suggest that they are
>secondarily flightless descendants of Archeopteryx, not ancestors.

   No, not necessarily.  The old notion that one animal *must* appear in the
fossil record to be the ancestor of another has fallen by the wayside.  This
is due to the vagaries of fossilization, isolation of species, and various
other refinements in the science.

   For more, read "The problems with The Origin and Evolution of Birds" and
"Dinosaurs and Evolution," page three, in my Journal.

** Dinosauria On-Line. Home of THE DINOSTORE ** "Those who trade a        **
** (Dino stuff for sale), Jeff's Journal of  ** little freedom for a      **
** Dinosaur Paleontology, Jeff's Dinosaur    ** little security will soon **
** Picture Gallery, and The DOL Dinosaur     ** find they have none of    **
** Omnipedia. http://www.dinosauria.com      ** either." -- Jeff Poling   **