The Origin and Evolution of Birds, 2nd edition

Things move so fast in this area of great interest that a scant three years after the publication of the first edition, we have an update.

I was amazed that Padian and Chiappe failed to cite the first edition of this book in the 'Further Reading' section of their paper in the Feb. 1998 issue of Scientific American.

Below is an interesting passage I found in J.D. Powell's book 'Night Comes to the Cretaceous.' Even though Powell was not commenting on Padian and Chiappe, it is nevertheless quite germane.

'Officer and Drake's argument received a quick rebuttal from the Alvarezes, who accused the pair of breaching scientific etiquette by failing to cite any of the papers presented at the 1981 Snowbird I conference.... Why was this a serious error? Because scholarship is cumulative, with each generation standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before. To fail to cite relevant papers that one knows about is a grievous error (to overlook one you should have known about is bad enough): It cheats the authors of those papers of their rightful recognition; it misleads readers who are not expert in the subject at hand; and it avoids contradictory evidence, thereby falsely fortifying your own position. Most scientists would say there are only two reasons for failure to cite a relevant paper: ignorance or dishonesty.'

Draw your own conclusions.

Do you have any formal education in the life sciences other than highschool biology?

Deinonychosaurs did not have a pygostyle. The pygostyle consists of fused caudal vertebrae. In Deinonychosaurs there is an extreme elongation of the prezygapophyses of the caudal vertebrae and the chevrons. These slender rods may extend over the length of some 10 vertebrae. Apparently this stiffened the distal tail but the vertebral bodies themselves were not fused. John Ostrom provides a detailed description of this features in 'Osteology of Deinonychus antirrhopus, an Unusual Theropod from the Lower Cretaceous of Montana', Peabody Museum of Natural History Bulletin 30 (1969).

It's significantly reduced relative to non-avians. Perhaps that is their criterion for considering it a vestige.

It's present in the pigeon, from it's origin on the tail to its insertion on the femur (figure 4 in Gatesy and Dial's paper). Similar in gulls (e.g. Larus delawarensis, fig. 6.16 in Baumel's 'Handbook of Avian Anatomy'.

There might have been a muscle scar at the site of insertion on the femur but, as Ostrom already described for Deinonychus, 'no recognizable fourth trochanter is preserved in either femur, nor is there any discernible scar indicating the insertion site of the M. caudifemoralis' ('On a new specimen of the Lower Cretaceous theropod dinosaur Deinonychus antirrhopus', Breviora 439: 1-21 (1976)). These features are not described for Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx (nor Archaeopteryx). Apparently the caudofemoralis in these taxa is reduced to a point where it's osteological correlates are no longer discernible. In that case its presence can be infered only on grounds that when a primitive feature is still present in derived members of a clade it is likely that it was present in more basal taxa with a more plesiomorphic morphology of preserved elements.

Of course Cal ignores the third possibile orign of birds suggested by Dr Chatterjee and Avimimus, but then Cal only has eyes for 'cladist heresies'

-Betty Cunningham

More than you think. Besides, does it mean that you only appeal to authority, instead of evidence?

You are correct. I misread you. It is more properly labeled a quasi-pygostyle.

Presumably they are vestigial in all other birds, if not completely absent.

That means there is no evidence of its presence. Feduccia (1999) is not refuted.

The fourth trochanter, AFAIK, is not found in mammals, but the caudofemoralis is. I am assuming that you are suggesting that Deinonychus has lost the caudofemoralis, correct? Then its loss is definitely independent of its loss in Aves. This is because the last common ancestor of pigeons and gulls still retain the caudofemoralis. So the distribution of the caudofemoralis actually argues against a close relationship between birds and Deinonychosaurs.

If so, that would tend to corroborate Hou et al.'s tree. Perhaps the last common ancestor of the Ornithurae and Sauriurae have a caudofemoralis, but it is lost early in the Sauriurae (Archaeopteryx) but is retained in the Ornithurae, since it is still found in some modern birds. That would tend to show that Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx may be flightless Sauriurine or enantiornithine birds. If so, and if Deinonychus does not have a caudofemoralis, then it cannot be a close relative of the common ancestor of Aves. The caudofemoralis is thus one more piece of evidence that argues against the dinosaurian origin of birds.

<< Very interesting. Since Archaeopteryx did not have a pygostyle, it would seem that the pygostyle in the Deinonychosaurs evolved separately from those found in later enantiornithine and ornithurine birds. >>

Why? There's that enantiornithine bird found in Madigascar with veloceraptor feet. It could be that maniraptors are in fact no more than secondarily flightless enantiornithine birds. Therefore, the pygostyle could have have evolved once.

eric l.

According to Feduccia (1999), this animal (Rhaonavis) is most likely a chimera (a composite) of several different animals. The same locality also yielded a bird: Vorona.

If that is the case, then the dinosaurian origin of birds would be disproven.

Even though I ordered the book, I got impatient and went to the library.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

P. 378 Illustration of a dissected Varanus salvator tail with hair-like collagen fibers that support the tail. It should put to rest the claim that Sinosauropteryx has 'protofeathers.'

P.379 Feduccia disputes the interpretation of a nest-brooding Oviraptor, claiming that Oviraptor could have been stealing eggs. He also pointed out that the supposed Oviraptor nest fits the description of a Protoceratops nest by Colbert which appeared in A. Bellairs (1970). Feduccia further argues that the supposed eggs and nests of Oviraptor and Troodon are 'typically reptilian' 'with their series of paired partially buried eggs that preclude the possibility of egg rotation.' He further notes that egg rotation is unique to birds, and that it is fatal to reptiles.

p.380 Baby Velociraptor has serrated teeth, contradicting Norell et al.'s (1994) report of unserrated teeth in a fragmentary, presumably undiagnosable dromaeosaurid fossil.

p.396 Concerning the cladistic analysis of Caudipteryx and Protarchaeoptyerx '...about half of the anatomical characters used are primitive features and are therefore of no use in the phylogeney, whereas about half of the characters are not present in either Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx'

p.396 'Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx are replete with features of secondarily flightless Mesozoic, sauriurine birds, which are ignored in the cladistic analysis.'

p.397 'The skull of Caudipteryx is particularly birdlike, with a posteroventral foramen magnum.'

P.397 '...in Caudipteryx there is a reduced fibula, the opisthopubic pubis has no pubic foot or boot, and the acetabulum is not theropodlike. Most interesting is that Caudipteryx preserves a mass of gizzard stones...that would make it the only herbivore among the 'raptors'.'

p.397 'Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx were 'Mesozoic kiwis.''

On the identity of the manual digits and Wagner and Gauthier's claim of a frame shift, Feduccia (1999 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.) writes:

'(i) there is no evidence for any substantial morphological change in theropod hands that would indicate any kind of shift throughout their evolution. ... (iii)in bird development, the fore- and hindlimbs exhibit the same highly conserved developmental pattern, so if there is a frame shift, it would have to occur in the forelimb but not in the hindlimb.'

IOW, birds alone are the exceptions when it comes to serial homology. That is highly unlikely of course.

'...serrated teeth claimed for Protarchaeopteryx cannot be confirmed by the dozens of people who have examined the specimens.' (ibid.)

[I must admit here that the report of serrated teeth by the describers of Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx had misled me into believing that they may have been theropods since this character is a theropodian one.]

I may add that Feduccia, in the second edition, claims that 'The paper in Nature [describing Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx] is extremely difficult to decipher, and numerous investigators...who have examined the specimens cannot match the descriptions and drawings to the speciemens....' (p.394)

Hope that helps.

Cal is only partially correct in how he describes my position. I formally recognize two separate dinosaur Orders Saurischiformes and Ornithischiformes. However, I continue to code them 'informally' as sister groups. I still recognize a dinosaur clade, but have enough doubts about it that I will not unite them 'formally' into a single order. That's an advantage of the Kinman System. Uncontroversial clades are formally named, while more controversial clades can simply be coded until more evidence is available. As for Order THECODONTIFORMES, I will post my updated and expanded classification here very soon. Yes it is NOW paraphyletic. However, Thecodontiformes was a perfectly good holophyletic (strictly monophyletic) group in the upper Permian and lower Triassic, until certain thecodont groups raced ahead of the rest of them evolutionarily during the upper Triassic (dinosaurs, crocodyliforms & pterosaurs). These anagenetic spurts are recognized by taxonomically upgrading such descendant groups to ordinal status (anagenesis plus cladogenesis yields a more informative classification using the Kinman System). Thecodontiformes became pretty much extinct at the end of the Triassic, although its descendants continued on (dinosaurs and pterosaurs until end of Cretaceous; and crocs and birds to the present). If you have to DEFINE Thecodontiformes, it is all Archosauromorphs, excluding its more successful descendants (dinosaurs, pterosaurs, birds, and crocs). Yes that does make it paraphyletic, but Kinman markers for the excluded taxa transforms it into a semi-paraphyletic group (thus informationally holophyletic). This basal archosauromorph Order shows plenty of diversity (about 30 families), but not as much as the diversity of its more successful descendants. But beyond its diversity, Thecodontiformes (or Thecodontia sensu lato) is an important and useful taxon because of the continuing controversies over the interrelationships of its own constituent families and which of these families gave rise to various groups of 'higher' archosauromorphs. When I post my new classification, you can see my own views and how I draw attention to certain prominent controversies (especially origins of pterosaurs and of birds). Later, Ken Kinman

The origin of the birds have been often discussed, but the origin of pterosaurs have not. Feduccia commented that Padian based his cladogram of a close relationship between dinosaurs and pterosaurs on the assumption that pterosaurs were bipedal. Since pterosaurs were in fact most likely quadrupedal from the earliest days of their history, it appears that they probably could not have shared a close relationship with the dinosaurs.

But do the fibers occur through biological activity or simply by mechanical action (like those on the sea snake)? There is a difference.

Then why have Oviraptor embryos been actually found inside eggs presumed to be from Protoceratops?

Feduccia further argues that

Then is Feduccia claiming that birds are not descended from nonavian reptiles?

Perhaps this is because Caudipteryx is a nonavian theropod related to the birds.

Therizinosaurs?

If three-fingered dinosaurs are closer to birds than dinosaurs with more, then the fingers could be 1,2,3 or 2,3,4 depending on at which point it occurred.

Do you now believe that C. and P. have feathers?

White Shite

'Yes it is NOW paraphyletic. However, Thecodontiformes was a perfectly good holophyletic (strictly monophyletic) group in the upper Permian and lower Triassic, until certain thecodont groups raced ahead of the rest of them evolutionarily during the upper Triassic (dinosaurs, crocodyliforms & pterosaurs).'

In what way have these three orders 'raced ahead of the rest'? That they have a geater diversity than the various 'Thecodontiformes' is based upon that they survived the end of the Triassic.

'Thecodontiformes became pretty much extinct at the end of the Triassic'

I thought none of the 'Thecodontiformes' entered the Jurassic?

'(especially origins of pterosaurs and of birds).'

What are your views on the Neornithes, speaking of birds?

White Shite