Re: downy dinos

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2001, Jeff Hecht wrote:
> At 3:20 PM -0700 9/1/01, Waylon Rowley wrote:
> > [...]
> 
> That doesn't work for polar bears, and I don't see how it would work 
> for feathers. Light guiding is a complex process; it would require 
> feathers designed not for flight but for light guiding, and nothing 
> today does that. (Merging the inputs from different filaments on the 
> feather would be quite complex.)

Maybe not as complex as we thought. Recently two different sea creatures 
have been shown to have light guiding structures.

Rossella racovitzae, an antarctic sponge, has glassy spines (described in
the August 4th Science News as being a "finger length or two" in length)
that gather light.

The August 25th Science News tells of a brittlestar, Ophiocoma wendtii,
whose arms are covered in micro lenses.
 
> It's simpler to envision feathers starting as feathers optimized for 
> insulation.