Re: Alternative origins of birds (humor) (was RE: birds DID NOT evolve from therapods)

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

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001 08:56:14  
 Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
>Yes, Michael Skrepnick has thus finally presented his own "arboreal origin
>of birds"; not "from the trees down", but simply "from the trees"...
>
>Some of us have joked about a comic symposium for SVP called "Anything But
>Dinosaurs: Alternative Hypotheses to Bird Origins".  The goal was to come up
>with the most outrageous alternatives to the dinosaurian origin, the weirder
>the better.  Mike's would have won by a longshot!!  Other alternatives were
>turtles (present in the Late Triassic, and thus older than birds; have
>modified cervicals; have toothless beaks; not dinosaurs), frogs (live in
>trees; present in the Late Triassic; have synsacra; not dinosaurs), and the
>inarticulate brachiopod Lingula (found in lagoonal sediments, like
>Archaeopteryx; present in the fossil record much earlier than birds; has
>long tail-like pedicle; maybe sprang out of the water and spin
>helicopter-like to settle back down; not dinosaur).

Lingula?  Please!  If anything, I think this list should take a closer look at 
my own bird origin hypothesis: birds evolved from a spiriferid brachiopod.  
Think about it.  Like Lingula spiriferids are found in lagoonal sediments like 
Archaeopteryx, are present in the fossil record much earlier than birds, and 
also possessed a pedicle.  However, spiriferids also are marked by their long 
hinges and mucronate cardinal extremities (often called "wings!!!").

I think it's pretty clear that birds evolved from spirifers, a hypothesis that 
I, in the spirit of BAD, ABSRD, etc., have dubbed the "BS" hypothesis.

Steve

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Steve Brusatte-DINO LAND PALEONTOLOGY
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