Re: Dino/Birds? was Mesozoic snow? and fund for Antonio

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

Aidan Karley (aidan_karley@yahoo.co.uk) wrote:

<Hmmm, what's that warm glow ? ... Oh, it's the cheeks of the National
Geographic man in the corner. 'Scuse me, I need to open the window, it's
getting hot in here.>

  Nearly every published specimen has shown a lack of such admixture involved
in the types or referred "important" material. Thus, the "Archaeoraptor" mess
has largely NOT been the rule, despite antagonists such as Feduccia arguing the
extreme of this idea in popular media for doubting affinities of the
"dinobirds". That most of the Liaoning holotypes are not so "cobbled" together,
and that one of the few truly fragmented slabs to be published, the largish
*Beipiaosaurus*, has been corroborated by a single slab showing a nearly
complete tail and partial pelvis that may very well be part of the holotype
itself given the location of recovery and lack of overlapping material (a left
ilium on one block and a right ilium on the other; a single isolated caudal
with the holotype corresponds to the gap in the caudal series of the referred
slab). These argue against forgery. Details like this will be overlooked by the
opponents in their "quest" to prove that birds are not dinosaurs, and that all
feathered "dinosaurs" are neither theropods nor dinosaurs, but birds, whose
ancestry apparently lies with the protorosaurs or Avicephala (without much
corroborating data aside from superficial similarities). Thus there were no
feathered theropods.

<One wonders what factors could be ... adjusted ... pressured ... socially 
engineered, to improve the situation? The behaviour of some of Cope and Marsh's
 collectors in the field was not always exemplary, but not quite so blindly 
destructive either. Similarly, though by modern standards, a professional 
collector such as Mary Anning was by no means perfect, nor was she so
rapacious. It would take someone much more familiar with the real-world
pressures on the locals to advise on what could be done to enhance the benefit
to them of the scientific community getting better access to quality context
for the fossils that do come out.>

  Attempts to indictate a desire for the collectors to make precious all
material uncovered is futile apparently, as this has been going on for 10
years. The people paying the money for the material want feathered dinosaurs,
not just any old *Hyphalosaurus*. That the Chinese government owns and is thus
entitled to the fossils means they will not feel compelled to compete in the
market for purchasing "scientifically important" material. To my knowledge,
this is why they continue to work the quarries and perhaps twice and most
likely three times more what we get into museums is released to private hands
for the expenditure of yen. Which gets food, clothes, and so forth. It's not a
_perfect_ economy, but it favors the private collectors (aka, people with money
to spend), whereas museums cannot compete since there is no money to be
exchanged (unless it's _sub rosa_).

  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)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the 
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to 
do so." --- Douglas Adams


                
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