Re: PALEONEWS:High-flying dinosaur's wings clipped

["Timothy Williams" <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

> http://www.smh.com.au/news/0002/08/world/world15.html
>
> SMH-Australian:  High-flying dinosaur's wings clipped
> more on the Archeoraptor mess

It's the exact same article that was published in Britain's _Guardian_.

It states: "Until that point, the most widespread theory was that birds 
evolved separately from and parallel to dinosaurs, from a common reptilian 
ancestor that roamed the earth over 250m years ago. These
were small lizard-like animals that climbed trees and evolved feathers 
specifically for flight. A contradictory theory had emerged, according to 
which birds were direct descendants of larger, upright dinosaurs such as the 
velociraptors in the Spielberg film, but the Chinese fossils were the first 
real challenge to the orthodox view."

It was?  Silly me, I thought somebody called John Ostrom offered a pretty 
good challenge 30 years ago.  I had no idea that the notion of a theropod 
ancestry for birds was so unorthodox.  Thank goodness I have the press to 
set me straight.

As Arthur Daley's nemesis, Detective Sergeant Chisholm, once said, the only 
thing I believe in a newspaper is the date.


Tim
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