Re: Protoavis?

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

> >     However, the reason that most paleontologists haven't accepted
> >_Protoavis_ as the ancestor of birds is two-fold; the speicmen is
> >fragmentary,
>         No more or less so than _Unenlagia_, IMHO...

      But quite a bit less so then Archaeopteryx.  Besides, there is a lot
more material availible for theropods then there is for Protoavis.
Compare the amount and quality of material availible for Deinonychus,
Velociraptor, even Troodon, with the one scrappy specimen of Protoavis.  A
lot of the bird-like theropods may be just as scrappy as Protoavis, but we
have more of them, more people have accessed and have examined them,
and many other types are represented by considerably better material.   

>         O.K.: TIME OUT. I have not read the origional _Protoavis_ article
> completely (no time), but I know for a fact that Chatterjee currently
> believes that _Protoavis_ *is* a theropod. Period.

     But does Currie?  I don't think that he does, or at least not a
maniraptorian; someone with the article handy might check on that.    
In any case, even if he DOES share Chatterjee's opinion that Protoavis is
a theropod, he still lends more weight to troodontids, and to a lesser
degree dromeosaurs.

LN Jeff