Of course they would like that to be the case, and it's true that bird
fossils were found close to, but not mixed up with, _Rahonavis_. As I've
read through the responses of various "Dinolist" members to that
suggestion of a chimera, by Larry Martin, I was reasonably convinced
that Martin had no good reason to be as sceptical of the find as he was.
The fact that he jumped on the band-wagon which proclaimed a crocodilian
hepatic pump in _Sinosauropteryx_, even though the evidence was an
illusion of preparation and bad-photography, well his objectivity is
severely questionable. All scientists have theories, but the
anti-dinosaur camp are doing their science a disservice by extreme
denial. Their biomechanical objections to birds-as-dinosaur-descendents
are reasonable, though based on a charicature of what dinologists claim,
but their anatomical objections are based on poor knowledge of dinosaur
fossils.
Adam
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com