Re: Jurassic Park

["Caleb Lewis" <christianwarior7@hotmail.com>]

----Original Message Follows----
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 20:53:25 -0700
Reply-To: <vonrex@gte.net>
From: "Peter Von Sholly" <vonrex@gte.net>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: Re: Jurassic Park



----------
> From: TWILLIAMS@canr1.cag.uconn.edu
> To: tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu; dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Jurassic Park
> Date: Saturday, September 26, 1998 2:57 PM
> 
> > 
> > It's *real* simple: _Sinosauropteryx_, a compsognathid, had 
hair-like
> > "proto-feathers". Birds have feathers. In pretty much every 
phylogeny
> > published recently, dromaeosaurids share more recent ancestry with
birds
> > than with compsognathids.
> 
> _Sinosauropteryx_ may have had feathers, but there's no evidence that 
> _Compsognathus_ (the only other known compsognathid) did.  The 
> type specimen of _Compsognathus_ from Bavaria is quite naked, yet 
> pterosaurs and _Archaeopteryx_ from the same limestones show at 
> least some trace of body covering - fur for pterosaurs, feathers for 
> _Archaeopteryx_.
> > 

Yes, and further, the point I wished to make is that as far as I know, 
it
is not an "almost" certainty that Velociraptors had fur or feathers.  
Nor
is it REAL simple to know things like that.  If this list fills an
educational role in any way, I think it's wrong to spread speculative 
ideas
as though we really know things that we don't know.  People could 
"learn" a
whole lot of hooey that way.




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