RE: Perching, climbing, roosting was Re: 11th specimen of Archaeopteryx

[Anthony Docimo <keenir@hotmail.com>]

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> Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 19:55:30 -0500
> From: d_ohmes@yahoo.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Perching, climbing, roosting was Re: 11th specimen of 
> Archaeopteryx
>
> On 11/8/2011 7:04 PM, Dann Pigdon wrote:
>
> > The problem with passive gliding is that it usually takes the subject 
> > downward as well as across
>
> Downward and outward.

Like with the modern _Draco volans_.
 
Downward would be like a polar bear.
 
> It runs counter to my view of how evolution works to assume that a
> passive-gliding physique arises while presenting such liability that
> it's owner must commandeer a burrow to avoid a predator.
 
 One would think that, if burrowing and burrow-stealing was so ideal (and the 
burrow didn't collapse under the weight of a megapredator hunting for 
tree-dwelling protobirds), all small dinosaurs would burrow, and we wouldn't 
have birds.
 
 
> Proud to say I might be the first person to bring that silt-stunned
> thing up, not embarrassed in the slightest.
>
> But c'mon, man -- how is a sauropod going to sneak up on somebody in the
> woods?
 
 Novel reason to have the neck swinging over - so nobody hears the sauropod 
walking.  :)