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On Apr 11, 2005, at 11:42 AM, Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote: > > I have it the other way round: birds evolved sometime during the Late > Permian as a divergent group of feathered, arboreal prolacertiforms, > and all > dinosaurs are giant, terrestrial descendants of various progressively > more modern > forms from that lineage. I'm working on a book about this. Dr. Frances James, an ornithologist/ecologist from Florida State University, gave a talk here last week where she supposed that the Maniraptora, including oviraptors and dromeosaurs, were large flightless birds. It seems that flightlessness has evolved in birds numerous times, and its adaptations completely swamp the characters used in typical cladistic analysis of bird-dinosaur relationships. She also was able to point out several bird-specific (i.e. vestigial flight characters) features present in some maniraptors. It was almost convincing...I'd like to hear more! -- Tim Demko tdemko@umn.edu Assistant Professor Department of Geological Sciences University of Minnesota Duluth 217 Heller Hall 1114 Kirby Drive Duluth, MN 55812 Voice: (218)726-8340 Fax: (218)726-8275 http://umn.edu/home/tdemko
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