ICHTHYORNIS MESS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Dan Bensen wrote...

> I'm doing a reconstruction of Ichthyornis dispar in the usual way 
> (looking at skeletal reconstructions and fleshing them out) and I've 
> encountered something odd.  Ichthyornis's head is _huge_!  In the 
> reconstrcution I'm looking at (in The Rise of Birds by Sankar 
> Chatterjee) the cranium is about the same size as the rib cage.  [snip]

Marsh's _Ichthyornis victor_ reconstructions and the 
mounted-in-plaster holotype specimen ARE COMPOSITE which, as 
explained by Clarke at SVP '99, include material from several taxa 
(among which might be neornithines like charadriiforms and 
apatornithids). Until someone sorts out which material is the true 
_Ichthyornis_ stuff, the toothed bird we all 'know' cannot be reliaby 
restored. _I. dispar_, the generotype, is not as well figured as _I. 
victor_ and if memory serves most ichthyornithid reconstructions are 
of the latter species.

"Don't eat me: I have a family - a wife and kids. Eat them!"

DARREN NAISH 
PALAEOBIOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
School of Earth, Environmental & Physical Sciences
UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
Burnaby Building
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