Re: Ruben et al. article on-line

[Alan Sinder <alan@nichimen.com>]

All:

The article is pretty clear. Again, One man's collagen is another man's
feather-like structure. And, simply, looking at one type of graceful
supposedly birdlike dinosaur and claiming ALL dinosaur lungs share
crocodilelike lungs displays poor logic skills. You need a larger
sample base than 1.

from the article:

>> Paleontological and neontological evidence indicates that theropod
>> dinosaurs possessed unmodified, bellowslike septate lungs that were
>> ventilated with a crocodilelike hepatic-piston diaphragm.

And does this preclude featured crocodilians?

And the sidebar
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/278/5341/1229a
displays a touch of focused professional zealotry:

>> _PALEONTOLOGY: Lung Fossils Suggest Dinos Breathed in Cold Blood_ 
>> by Ann Gibbons

>> When John Ruben first laid eyes on a high-quality photo of the so-called
>> "feathered" dinosaur from China last year, he was stunned. It wasn't the
>> featherlike structures that riveted his attention--he dismissed them as
>> collagen fibers (see sidebar)--but the theropod dinosaur's innards, which
>> were outlined in the slab of stone. "My eyes popped out," recalls Ruben,
>> a respiratory physiology expert at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
>> "I realized that here was the first evidence in the soft tissue that
>> theropods had the same kind of compartmentalization of lungs, liver, and
>> intestines that you would find in a crocodile"--and not in a bird.

So this does not resolve BADD or BCF one way or another.

What does the chromosomal data say about these early critters? 

==
John R. Hutchinson wrote:
> 
> At this URL you can see and download the latest from Ruben et al. It's a
> new thing for Science to allow free access to their articles. Darwin bless
> them. :)
> 
> http://www.sciencemag.org/
> 
> Look for "Lung lineage of theropods, Ruben et al., accompanying news story,
> and sidebar."  Enjoy!
> 
>                        --John R. Hutchinson