Re: Archaeopteryx not the first bird, is the earliest known (powered) flying dinosaur

[GSP1954@aol.com]

The basic contention that small theropods must have had a lot of 
preadaptations on hand before becoming fliers is fundamentally absurd. 
Something similar 
to Ornitholestes already has the basic skeletal features needed to become an 
incipient glider. All it has to do is evolved sufficiently long wing, 
asymmetrical wing feathers, hold the arms out to the sides and there you go. 
All the 
other stuff for folding the wings (elbow-wrist push-pulley system), further 
increasing lift area (longer arms and still bigger wing feathers)  and 
producing a 
power stroke (large sternal plate, bigger pectoral crest, ossified sternal 
ribs and uncinates) can be developed as flight progresses. No one has ever 
shown 
why any dinosaurian flight adaptation had to evolve first as a preadaptation, 
aside from the combination of long arms and bipedalism. One or more flight 
feature may have started as a preadaptation, but that does not mean any or all 
had to. 

Nor has anyone explained why Archaeopteryx has expanded muscle attachments 
areas on its arms just to glide. Where is the expansion of muscle attachments 
of 
the limbs of any gliding animal? They just stretch out the legs and hold them 
there for the brief time needed to make a glide. It is obvious that expansion 
of muscle attachments on a forewing will one way or another allow and improve 
the power of a flight stroke. 

I truly do not even begin to understand the arguments to the contrary. They 
seem part of a continuing effort to some, based on a historical heritage that 
saw dinosaurs as having nothing to do with birds, to keep theropods that were 
not full birds as nonfliers or mere gliders, as though nonavian dinosaurs were 
for some reason not allowed to be true fliers. Very odd.  

There was no need for sinornithosaurs to deploy the nonflapping leg wings 
when power flying. As I discussed in Prehistoric Times a few years ago, they 
could have been used to increase the range of periodic nonpowered glides, for 
soaring, and has extra flight controls, especially flight brakes, among aerial 
hunt
ers that lacked the more sophisticated flight apparatus of real raptors. 

G Paul