Re: Gliders to Fliers? (Was Re: Ruben Strikes Back)

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/26/99 11:03:04 AM EST, mbonnan@hotmail.com writes:

<< Herrerasaurus is 3 meters long.  Dilophosaurus is much larger.  Grasping 
 hands be damned!  How do such large animals clamber through trees?  Where 
 are the adaptations in the feet of either of these dinosaurs?  
 Dilophosaurus, and the smaller ceratosaurs Coelophysis and Syntarsus, lived 
 in very arid, desert-like environs.  Where were all the trees to do the 
 climbing in?  >>

Nobody has claimed that these animals lived in trees! (Where do these notions 
come from???) The tree-dwelling ancestors of Herrerasaurus, Dilophosaurus, 
and so forth would have been small Middle Triassic animals a foot or two long 
(with tail). Their large cursorial, terrestrial descendants had abandoned 
tree-dwelling for millions of years and evolved a suite of cursorial, 
terrestrial adaptations that changed the shapes of their feet and hands (for 
example). Can you see any arboreal adaptations in the skeleton of an ostrich? 
Yet most ornithologists will claim that it had an arboreal ancestral form.