At 12:50 AM 16/03/2006, Don Savino (Lamson) wrote:
There are a number of possible explanations for Juravenator's nakedness.
Feathers could have been lost on the evolutionary line leading to
Juravenator after arising in an ancestor to both it and its feathered
relatives.
How about the possibility that the area of skin preserved on the
fossil simply had no feathers, but the rest of the integument
did? There are many living birds with bare patches of skin on
various parts of their anatomy (and of course all but a few species
have scales on their legs and feet). Just because part of the animal
was covered by scales does not mean that the whole animal was.
Ronald Orenstein
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