2 x Re: small dinosaurs with feathers

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jura" <archosaur@reptilis.net>
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 1:39 AM

> [...] The statement that birds are called living dinosaurs simply for it's
eye catching appeal, is far from nonsense. When reading Heresies or any of
GSP, or Norell's work, one routinely reads on how birds are living dinosaurs
and how "amazing" and "impressive" it is to think that the sparrow sitting
outside one's window is "the same kind of animal" as _T.rex_.
>
> Never does one read on how "amazing" or "incredible" it is to think that
we, as mammals, are the "same kind of animals" as dinocephalians, or
_Dimetrodon_, even though the reasoning is exactly the same.

I think the reason for this is simple... nobody (who accepts evolution and
knows what a synapsid is) doubts that mammals are synapsids. Even 20 years
ago most people doubted that birds are dinosaurs. So the latter is news, and
"amazing" and "impressive" (though no longer for most people).

_________________________________________


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Bois" <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>

> And an even greater source of wonder if _most_ flying theropods
> survived!

Yeah, if. I wouldn't disregard Enantiornithes so much, for instance. On
molecular clocks I recommend the following:
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/1999BioEssays.pdf and
www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~alroy/Paleocene.html*.

> Then the surprise becomes: "If almost every other terrestrial
> vertebrate survived [...]"

You aren't serious, are you?

* Mentions a possible "lipotyphlan insectivore"... probably that refers to
*Batodon* from the Hell Creek Fm which has been regarded as a shrew but is
nowadays considered close to *Cimolestes*, no close relatives of which
survived the Eo- and Oligocene. Also mentions that "[t]he
eutherian-metatherian split dates to at least 98 MYA" -- *Eomaia* and
*Kokopellia, among others, are older. Proceeds to cite a paper that took a
molecular study and recalibrated it based on the fossil record; the results
imply that "only five eutherian orders had split from their sister groups by
the K-T", among them Lagomorpha and Rodentia, but a bunch of basal Glires is
known from the Paleocene and not the K of Asia:
www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Metazoa/Deuterostoma/Chordata/Synapsida/E
utheria/Basal_Anagalida/Anagalida_1.htm. (Zalambdalestidae and Macroscelidea
are certainly wrong there.)