Feather origin hypothesis (for predator evasion??)

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Dear All,
    I have no idea if this has ever been proposed (I would think someone 
somewhere would have proposed it as a possibility, but not sure if it has).
    Before feathers were exapted for insulation, brooding, display, 
gliding, flying, or anything else, could feathers have originally appeared 
at the end of theropod (pre-dino-bird) tails as a predator evasion strategy?
    It seems to me the most expendable part of reptiles and many other 
animals is the tail, and various lizards use a brighter colored tail tip 
and/or very detachable wiggly one as a sacrifice well worth escaping a 
predator with one's life and minimal damage.
    Couldn't small theropods have used similar strategies, and perhaps 
increased it effectiveness by growing a protofeathered tail extension 
(perhaps colored to divert attention more effectively to an expendable tail 
tip) that might increase the probability of escape as it scampered up a tree 
or down a hole.
    Lengthening the protofeathers and growing them up the tail may have 
enhanced the success of such a strategy, and as they spread up the back they 
could have begun being exapted for other uses as well, like sexual displays, 
and the rest (as they say) is history.  Or even eye spots on such tail 
feathers as a means to briefly startle a predator?
     If such an origin of feathers has been proposed, why is it not taken 
more seriously as the original purpose and driving force for the elongation 
for such structures?  And is there any possibility that the  later evolution 
of pygostyles, shortened tails, and longer tail feathers, could have been a 
further refinement of such a strategy?
            ----More speculation,
                                   Ken Kinman
P.S.  Any possibility that Longisquama's "structures" folded back and served 
as a "false tail" in a somewhat similar fashion?   Well, I think I'd better 
stop now, as I've probably already provided lots of avenues to get 
criticized.  I'm just in one of those brain-storming moods I guess.
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