Re: PALEONEWS:Museum unveils bird-like dinosaur that may holdevolutionary key

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@mailcity.com>]

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 02:25:37   fredericus ruhe wrote:
>At 19:48 18-03-2000 -0800, you wrote:
>>http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/03/17/dinosaur.bird.ap/index.html
>>
>>CNN: Museum unveils bird-like dinosaur that may hold evolutionary key
>>
>
>>" It was fast, had a keen sense of smell and the structure of its arms
>>and its feathers may have allowed it to fly, although more study must be
>>done before that can be concluded, Burnham and Dertsler said. "
>
>
>I've only seen a sceleton reconstruction, and red some newspaper articles,
>but are there any feather-like structures preserved? I doubt it.
>This is just another newspaper-article that can't even spell Dr. Ostrom's
>name correctly

No, I don't believe feather impressions were found, as the environment in 
Cretaceous Montana was probably not capable of this type of fine preservation 
(correct me if I'm wrong).  

And, yes, the media has over played this, but the museum is also to blame (in 
my opinion).  They publicized this thing before scientific publication (which 
is becoming more and more common), and if anybody has checked out the Graves 
Museum website you have probably noticed several errors.  For instance, they 
said that "Dr. Paul Serano is from the Field Museum."  In reality Dr. Paul 
Sereno is from the University of Chicago and is a minor research associate at 
the Field (I believe).

Oh well,
Steve
http://www.geocities.com/stegob


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