New gliding reptile: Mecistotrachelos

[Paula Goodman <paulawilder@mac.com>]

Hello List members, I hope you do not mind the intrusion of a layperson 
who has been fatally bitten with dinosaur-fever... I have been 
following the latest discoveries, and the bird-as-dinosaur developments 
with intense interest, and this new gliding reptile, has me bursting 
out all over to ask the experts: *how do the wings of this new fossil 
relate to the maybe-feathers/maybe-scales wings of the Longisquama?  
(And do we know for sure that the Longisquama feathers/scales were not 
connected by a membrane between them??)

Paula Goodman

----------------------
David Peters wrote:

<<Yes, Coelurosauravus is related to Icarosaurus and Mecistotrachelos. 
Yes, the wings are homologous. What we see in Fraser's new gliding 
reptile is simply a later form that reduced and fused the ribs to the 
vertebrae, as in Icarosaurus, yet retained the long neck of 
Coelurosauravus -- and made it longer.>>