Climbing in theropods: extant and extinct

["Nick Gardner" <ratites637@hotmail.com>]

Tim Williams wrote-
> You may be interested to know that hoatzin chicks also use their beaks in 
> climbing trees.

Yesterday, I spent a good forty-five minutes or so watching a macaw climb 
about its pen at a pet store.  It used its feet predominantly, however, it 
often would grab the target branch with its mouth before using its feet.  At 
one point, it hung entirely from a branch by its beak.  The whole time I 
began to wonder if I had underestimated the range of movement in theropod 
legs.  Are there special adaptions in the ankle and knee joints of parrots 
that permit them to be so flexible or would these have been present in 
theropods as well?  Just the meer query of a paleoartist wishing to draw an 
arboreal theropod...



Nick Gardner

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