Re: "Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth..."

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

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<Wasn't my point. My point was that it doesn't share any features with the
crown group of Psittaciformes as a whole; it only shares features with
lories. Now if only I could find the paper to tell whether that's a
misinterpretation of mine... grrrr.>

  Pardon? Read the archives. They are rife with discussion of the actual
fossil morphology. There are SOME features that are like to lories, such
as the K-shaped vascular canals inside the avian jaw, whereas the
remainder of the jaw, as pointed out by Stidham (1998) and Hope (2001)
show psittaciform affinities in general, not in keeping with other taxa,
including the arrangement of crests and foramina on the dorsal and ventral
surfaces, the shape of the tomia, and the features at the
mesiorostral-most point in the jaw having "resorbtion" or "unossified"
qualities seen in psittacids most especially. Loriids (or if you prefer,
loriines; it really doesn't matter) may be UNIQUE with a derived
un-psittacid jaw, but the x-ray anatomy of the Messell "parrots" is
unkown.

  No reply on my critique of ceratopsian affinities?

  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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