Re: Sinornithoides in DA... the first Sleeping Dragon.

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

Kris Kripchak (MariusRomanus@aol.com) wrote:

<I don't know if this was ever mentioned during the discussion of Mei long...
but while I was looking through DA just now, I happened to flip to page 92.
There, Greg has pictured the partially prepared type specimen of
Sinornithoides. Even though it's a bottom view, the animal appears to be in a
position nearly identicle to that of Mei long. If this is the case, so much for
the revelation of a birdy sleeping posture being discovered first with Mei.>

  Indeed, this is true. The authors of the *Mei* paper noted *Sinornithoides*
similar posture, but indicated that the preservation level was lessened
compared to that of *Mei*, so that their new taxon was "conclusive" whereas the
Chinese animal was not. Debate concerns whether curled up in a "sleeping"
posture is verifiable, as to that of huddling during a volcanic disaster or
eolian/sandslide burial.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

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

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