Re: BCF (was New Article in Experimental Zoology)

[John Conway <john_conway@mac.com>]

On Saturday, August 24, 2002, at 06:09  PM, Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote:

> Feduccia is not correct in maintaining that birds bypassed dinosaurs in
> evolving from small arboreal archosaurs. Rather, birds and dinosaurs 
> both
> evolved from small feathered arboreal archosaurs, with different kinds 
> of
> dinosaurs (= giant, flightless dino-birds) evolving repeatedly from 
> different
> kinds of arboreal archosaurs throughout the Mesozoic (only a small--but
> better preserved--fraction of the total number of lineages that must 
> have
> appeared: note intense mosaic evolution among Liaoning forms, for 
> example).

I am curious, what definitions do you use for birds and dinosaurs? 
_Archaeopteryx_ + Neornithes (for Aves) and _Triceratops_ + Neornithes 
(for dinosaurs), or something else?

I am open minded as to the lifestyles and integument of 
archosaurs/dinosaurs, but does your argument require constructing an 
entirely new phylogeny, or would it just require adjustments to the 
currently accepted phylogenies?
Or is the primary argument about lifestyles/appearance of basal 
dinosaurs?

John Conway, Palaeoartist

"All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde

Protosite: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/
Systematic ramblings: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/phylogenetic/