Protoavis (was: Rahonavis....Both!)

["Patrick Norton" <ptnorton@email.msn.com>]

Larry Febo wrote:

<Not if Archie is considered as having actually lost some of these advanced
features (i.e.. acrocoracoid process and large sternum), and is on its way
to becoming secondarily flightless at the stage in which it was found>

I've studied Chatterjee's "The Rise of Birds" pretty closely from the
perspective of someone attempting a sculptural reproduction of the skeleton
of Protoavis, and have found a lot of problems in his illustrations--pieces
that don't fit, scale bars that appear to be simply wrong, illustrations of
the front and back of certain bones that (at least I) can't reconcile in 3
dimensions, etc. I was also troubled about the absence of photographs of the
actual material--everything is presented as an illustration.  I don't mean
this as a criticism--all these shortcomings are probably my own--only as an
observation that it's difficult for me to tell whether Protoavis had those
characters without something more than what is presented in "The Rise of
Birds."

If there are other publications on the postcranial Protoavis material, I'd
be interested in reviewing it.

PTNorton@msn.com
www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/galaxy/1962/