Re: Origin of feathers

[luisrey@ndirect.co.uk (luisrey)]

I came with the idea printed below a long time ago. It was irresistible to
add a fan of feathers to the arms of Oviraptor. Visit my website to see my
TWO reconstructions (one of them under the instructions of Luis Chiappe).
Hope you like them.

>An interesting idea proposed last weekend at Dinofest by
>Mark Orsen is that feathers may have evolved for the purpose
>of brooding early on in the history of theropods.
>He used Oviraptor as an example.  If you've seen the most
>recent fossil of O. sitting on it's nest, you can see it is trying
>to cover its eggs to protect them from the presumably scorching
>heat of the Mongolian desert.  But, without feathers, it would have
>only covered some of the eggs.  Orsen took the picture of the
>Oviraptor fossil and superimposed primary feathers onto its
>forearm and lo and behold they would have perfectly covered
>the eggs.  Makes a lot of sense, perhaps more so than any of
>the other theories.   It would have offered a great selective advantage
>to those animals which could protect their eggs and subsequently
>their young after hatching.  Then feathers could have been exapted
>for flight.
>
>Jonathan
>
>Spockjr@msn.com

Luis Rey

Visit my website on  http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~luisrey