Re: Copeing with mammals

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

John Bois wrote:

> With warmth and feathers, birds can persist in colder climates.  This
> might be especially important in incubation, etc.

Two things come to mind.  Firstly, pterosaurs (at least some of them) were 
also endowed with some form of insulatory body covering - as David pointed 
out.  Secondly, it's not entirely true to say that birds were unaffected by 
the K/T extinction event.  The neornithines lived on, and carried the banner 
of the entire Dinosauria into the Caenozoic.  But every other lineage of 
birds did NOT survive the Cretaceous, including the bountiful 
Enantiornithes.  The neornithines have a very poor Mesozoic record, and the 
attribution of many late-K avian taxa to this group is shaky.


David Marjanovic wrote:

> Unless you are hardline Etheridgian

Well, I like Melissa's music - but I woudn't call myself "hardline".

> Oh, Geez.  It should be Eldridgian after Niles Eldridge, who said _all_
> speciation follows catastrophies.

Ah, that sounds correct.  (Then again, I've never heard Niles sing.)



Tim