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Re: chicken wing-claws

At 05:23 PM 4/2/2004 +0100, Renato wrote: 
To the list members:

A few years back when I started to get a little more serious on dinosaurs, I
decided to check for myself if chickens would complie with their dinosaurian
origin, i. e., if they would have claws like their relative Ophistocomus.
In fact Gallus retains wingclaws all through it's life as does the Muschovy
duck, Cairina moschata.
I'm just stating this to find out if anyone here knew about this.

I just discovered this recently myself, although it seems that in the adult only the alular digit has a claw. Feduccia's "The Origin and Evolution of Birds" has a picture on the bottom half of page 19. Also, Fisher (1940) lists a wide variety of birds that have claws (as opposed to spurs) on their wings.

Feduccia, A. 1996. The Origin and Evolution of Birds. New Haven: Yale university Press.

Fisher, H. I. 1940. The Occurrence of Vestigial Claws on the Wings of Birds. American Midland Naturalist 23:234-243.