Re: another dumb question: Terror Birds are not dinosaurs?

[Paula Goodman <paulawilder@mac.com>]

Thank you all for your generosity in indulging this lay(wo)man's 
curiosity.  Well, it leaves me wondering, more specifically,  -- let 
say you were to find a fossil of T. Walleris and for some reason you 
had no way to know whether it were 2 million years old, or 70 million 
years old, and there were no trace of feathers, what would tip you off 
that this thing was closer to a chicken than to an oviraptor? The 
shortness of the tail?

On Jun 29, 2007, at 12:52 PM, T. Michael Keesey wrote:

> In 6/29/07, Paula Goodman <paulawilder@mac.com> wrote:

> It's certainly not wrong to say
> that _Phorusrhacus_ is a dinosaur, but you communicate more to by
> saying that it's a bird. (It's also not wrong to say that it's a
> neoavian neognath, but then you've lost the lay audience....)
>
> --
> Mike Keesey