Re: "Feathery fossil shows birds aren't dinosaurs"

["Matthew Bonnan" <mbonnan@hotmail.com>]

Larry Dunn wrote:

> How do these no-dino people explain the rather
> striking similarity between bird skeletons and those
> of certain small theropods?  Surely not in BCF terms?

As far as I understand, they explain the similarities between dinosaurs and 
birds as evolutionary convergence.  Maybe they specify what the dinosaurs 
and birds would be converging to in some article I am unaware of, but 
usually its just argued as homoplasy without the details.

I will be interested to see this article and pics (when I was visiting 
Kansas last year, Larry Martin was dropping hints that this specimen might 
change things).  Even if feathers and furculae developed in Longisquama, 
there are many other possibilities besides birds are not dinosaurs, 
including George's BCF, as well as the possibility that feathers and 
furculae developed several times in various ways in archosaurs and that 
dinosaurs hit on something that allowed them to become airborne (back to 
functional morphology, I'm afraid: decoupling of the hindlimb from the 
forelimbs, and hindlimbs from tails, ala Gatesy).

I don't think it is appropriate in any of this debate to call the dino/bird 
theory a "fantasy" as Fedduccia does.  There is no reason to use such 
rhetoric, even if one vehemently disagrees with the majority.  Scientific 
progress is made through the weight of evidence, not through a vote for 
popularity or ad hominem attacks.  The dino/bird theory could be 
invalidated, no doubt, but the evidence has to stand up to the test.  Who 
said what to who and who was insulted does little to inform us about the 
evidence for or against dino/bird evolution.  What will matter is what the 
Longisquama specimen has to tell us about archosaurs and bird origins.

Matt Bonnan
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com