Re: New in Nature: Birds Galore!

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

George Olshevsky (Dinogeorge@aol.com) wrote:

<Nice title, but it's not the dinosaurs that took to the air; dinosaurs
are  birds that re-took to the ground. They were airborne (after a
fashion), as  prolacertiforms, well before they became dinosaurs.>

  Ideals of what a "bird" is tell a different tale. We are aware of
George's assertion that "bird" equals a clade, but I have not yet seen any
argument that resolves that vernacular terminology must be in the same
measure as scientific terminology through any empirical manner. This is a
"personal choice" measure, and I for one, as I think most others reading
this, agree that "bird" (even if they don't use the word) refers to a
subset of dinosaurs, not a container for them.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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