Re: Heterodontosaurid with protofeathers

[Tim Williams <tijawi@yahoo.com>]

Evelyn Sobielski wrote:

> A *very advanced* basal ornithischian with "dinobristles".
> That is by far less informative as it seems; a lot can have
> happened in 65 Ma of temporal and half a world of spatial
> distance.
> 
> It is like using brood parasitism in cuckoos and cowbirds
> and nest-sharing in ostriches to argue that the original
> neornithine was a brood parasite.


No, it's not the same thing at all Eike.  We can observe nesting behavior in 
every living species of neornithean bird.  By contrast, the fossil record of 
integument in dinosaurs is woefully incomplete.  We only know what the 
integument looked like for a small fraction of Mesozoic dinosaurs - and most of 
these come from the Jehol biota.  It is only by our good fortune that a 
heterodontosaur can now be counted among their number.

Cheers

Tim