When reading the 'portrait of Protoavis' in Chatterjee's The Rise of Birds, it seems like virtually the whole skeleton is known (although disarticulated). How is it possible that it is a chimera when the skeleton seems so complete and so avian? (unless Chatterjee is 'filling in' missing parts to fit with his bird hypothesis and not mentioning it). The ilium also apparently has a renal fossa, which I thought was an avian synapomorphy, although the pubis is not fused ventrally, and is apparently short and not particularly derived. The arms also look very avian. Sorry if I'm irritating people, but I just cannot see how there can be so many disparate interpretations of the same skeleton, and I would be grateful if a listmember could explain the basis of the case for the Protoavis remains being a mixture of different archosaurs jumbled together, and why Protoavis has remained in this strange position of being generally ignored for so long. |