This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
the book is richly endowed.

On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
(dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.

Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found. The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:

(1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and

(2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
[If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.] A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.

(3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.

The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
"are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:

"Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
[p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]

The picture of "Archie" is very detailed and shows Ostrom's concept of the
feathered wing catching an insect. On the next page, the author favors
the hypothesis that "Archie" was a weak flier, and the controversial
hypothesis that feathers evolved to trap body heat, and that

"Archeopteryx had merely evolved feathers that were also shaped and grouped for flight."

This needs to be compared with the accurate, detailed illustration
showing "Archie" with asymmetrical flight remiges.

NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:

>This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
>It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
>which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
>a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
>so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
>the book is richly endowed.

Time for an update:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs

>On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
>(dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
>the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
>grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
>with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
>
>
>Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found. The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
>
>(1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
>about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
>
>(2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
>or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
>[If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
>interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.] A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
>
>(3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
>
>The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
>"are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
>
>"Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
> [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]

Gregory Paul:
"Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
to as "nonavian dinosaurs." This usage can become awkward,
and in general in this book dinosaurs that are not birds
are, with some exceptions, referred to simply as dinosaurs."

>The picture of "Archie" is very detailed and shows Ostrom's concept of the
>feathered wing catching an insect. On the next page, the author favors
>the hypothesis that "Archie" was a weak flier, and the controversial
>hypothesis that feathers evolved to trap body heat, and that
>
>"Archeopteryx had merely evolved feathers that were also shaped and grouped for flight."
>
>This needs to be compared with the accurate, detailed illustration
>showing "Archie" with asymmetrical flight remiges.
>
>
>NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
>number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
>who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.

Ever heard of aveairfoilan theropods?

On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
> >It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
> >which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
> >a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
> >so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
> >the book is richly endowed.

> Time for an update:

> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs

Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.

I do have question: are there any books that give information
on newer discoveries since 2017, the publication date of this Princeton Guide?
They do not have to be of the same caliber, of course.

> >On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
> >(dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
> >the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
> >grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
> >with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
> >
> >
> >Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found.
> >The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
> >
> >(1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
> >about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
> >
> >(2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
> >or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
> >[If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
> >interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.]
> > A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
> >
> >(3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
> >
> >The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
> >"are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
> >
> >"Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
> > [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]

> Gregory Paul:
> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."

This is in the book linked above, right?

The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
in the same way that bats are therapsids."

Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
and in their cladistic meaning.

Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
"Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.

[Gregory Paul again:]
> This usage can become awkward,
> and in general in this book dinosaurs that are not birds
> are, with some exceptions, referred to simply as dinosaurs."

> >The picture of "Archie" is very detailed and shows Ostrom's concept of the
> >feathered wing catching an insect. On the next page, the author favors
> >the hypothesis that "Archie" was a weak flier, and the controversial
> >hypothesis that feathers evolved to trap body heat, and that
> >
> >"Archeopteryx had merely evolved feathers that were also shaped and grouped for flight."
> >
> >This needs to be compared with the accurate, detailed illustration
> >showing "Archie" with asymmetrical flight remiges.
> >
> >
> >NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
> >number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
> >who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.

I will make that next installment after I get home tonight and have
the book handy again.

> Ever heard of aveairfoilan theropods?

The word is unfamiliar, but I would guess it refers to a most remarkable dinosaur,
Qi Yi, and its close relatives.

For over two centuries, it was said that there were three kinds of truly flying vertebrates:
birds, bats, and pterosaurs. Now apparently there is a fourth. And its wing structure
is very different from that of the other two. Fascinating.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 7/26/23 2:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
>>> It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
>>> which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
>>> a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
>>> so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
>>> the book is richly endowed.
>
>> Time for an update:
>
>> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs
>
> Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
> who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.
>
> I do have question: are there any books that give information
> on newer discoveries since 2017, the publication date of this Princeton Guide?
> They do not have to be of the same caliber, of course.
>
>
>>> On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
>>> (dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
>>> the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
>>> grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
>>> with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
>>>
>>>
>>> Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found.
>>> The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
>>>
>>> (1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
>>> about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
>>>
>>> (2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
>>> or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
>>> [If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
>>> interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.]
>>> A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
>>>
>>> (3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
>>>
>>> The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
>>> "are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
>>>
>>> "Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
>>> [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]
>
>> Gregory Paul:
>> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
>> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
>> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."
>
> This is in the book linked above, right?
>
> The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
> First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
> in the same way that bats are therapsids."

They're the same thing, and using mammals clarifies things even if you
don't know what therapsids are.

> Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
> that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
> was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
> Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
> victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
> the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
> and in their cladistic meaning.

I don't see the redefinition as all that radical. Nor is it at all clear
how you would quantify "the same size morphospace". I would intuitively
suppose that dinosaurs occupy somewhat less morphospace than therpsids,
since there is nothing like a dinosaur whale or any other aquatic mammal.

> Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
> reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
> the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
> To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
> added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
> This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
> which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

There are plenty of other characters; 7 cervical vertebrae, movement of
the quadrate and articular to the middle ear, double occipital condyle,
single set of deciduous teeth, etc. Doubtless many others, but that's
what I think of immediately. Then again, some of these diagnose a higher
taxon than Mammalia under the popular crown group definition.

> In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
> cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
> can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
> "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
> called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
> word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
> is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.

Actually, there is no general agreement on whether to use Neornithes or
Aves for the crown group. I happen to prefer Aves, but I think
Neornithes is actually more common. Avialae is something else. And of
course "birds" is not a technical term at all. I'm actually not quite
sure what you're complaining about or what it has to do with Paul.

> [Gregory Paul again:]
>> This usage can become awkward,
>> and in general in this book dinosaurs that are not birds
>> are, with some exceptions, referred to simply as dinosaurs."
>
>>> The picture of "Archie" is very detailed and shows Ostrom's concept of the
>>> feathered wing catching an insect. On the next page, the author favors
>>> the hypothesis that "Archie" was a weak flier, and the controversial
>>> hypothesis that feathers evolved to trap body heat, and that
>>>
>>> "Archeopteryx had merely evolved feathers that were also shaped and grouped for flight."
>>>
>>> This needs to be compared with the accurate, detailed illustration
>>> showing "Archie" with asymmetrical flight remiges.
>>>
>>>
>>> NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
>>> number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
>>> who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.
>
> I will make that next installment after I get home tonight and have
> the book handy again.
>
>
>> Ever heard of aveairfoilan theropods?
>
> The word is unfamiliar, but I would guess it refers to a most remarkable dinosaur,
> Qi Yi, and its close relatives.

I wouldn't think so, since those wings are not very avian. A google
search turns up no other mention than the one in the book, where it
refers to theropods with feathered wings, and is not intended to be a
formal taxon. In fact it might be a joke.

> For over two centuries, it was said that there were three kinds of truly flying vertebrates:
> birds, bats, and pterosaurs. Now apparently there is a fourth. And its wing structure
> is very different from that of the other two. Fascinating.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>
>

On Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 9:31:12 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
> number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
> who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.

It has to do with Troodon, [also spelled Troödon], now known to be a maniraptoran,
but there is great uncertainty about where it belongs in Maniraptora.
Look at the trees here, for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troodontidae
The last one even shows Anchiornis, which I've always thought of
as a close relative of Archaeopteryx, as a Troodontid.

There is also great uncertainty as to which dinosaurs
belong to the genus, or are its closest relatives:

However, all this confusion is nothing compared to the one in the book under review.

"For nearly a century, all that people knew about this family was a strange, small, pointed, saw-edged tooth. In the 1940s part of a lower jaw was found. Then, in 1979 and 1980, fossil hunters John Horner and Robert Makela found more such teeth, a jaw, other bits of skeleton and babies. They realized that troödontids in some ways had resembled those hamless plant-eaters, the hypsilophodontids. Yet the teeth were shaped for cutting flesh not crushing leaves. These bird-hipped dinosaurs had been meat-eaters -- animals as unbelievable as a carnivorous cow. Troödontids may deserve placing in a dinosaur suborder all their own." [p. 148]

Hey, with such a popular popularizer as Jack Horner behind the classification,
who was David Lambert to argue? As the caption "An ornithopod oddity," says,

"Proof is a supposed hypsilophodontid thigh bone now known to have been *Troödon*'s. The owner of the bone seems to have had unusually small, four-toed feet."

What had really happened, was that bones of an actual ornithischian had
been combined with the bones of a troodontid. IIRC, this was discovered after
the book was published.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

NEXT: Segnosaurus Lost and Segnosaurus Regained

On 7/26/23 7:11 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 9:31:12 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>> NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
>> number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
>> who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.
>
> It has to do with Troodon, [also spelled Troödon], now known to be a maniraptoran,
> but there is great uncertainty about where it belongs in Maniraptora.
> Look at the trees here, for instance:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troodontidae
> The last one even shows Anchiornis, which I've always thought of
> as a close relative of Archaeopteryx, as a Troodontid.
>
> There is also great uncertainty as to which dinosaurs
> belong to the genus, or are its closest relatives:
>
>
> However, all this confusion is nothing compared to the one in the book under review.
>
> "For nearly a century, all that people knew about this family was a strange, small, pointed, saw-edged tooth. In the 1940s part of a lower jaw was found. Then, in 1979 and 1980, fossil hunters John Horner and Robert Makela found more such teeth, a jaw, other bits of skeleton and babies. They realized that troödontids in some ways had resembled those hamless plant-eaters, the hypsilophodontids. Yet the teeth were shaped for cutting flesh not crushing leaves. These bird-hipped dinosaurs had been meat-eaters -- animals as unbelievable as a carnivorous cow. Troödontids may deserve placing in a dinosaur suborder all their own." [p. 148]

Bizarre. Do you have a citation to the actual publication?

> Hey, with such a popular popularizer as Jack Horner behind the classification,
> who was David Lambert to argue? As the caption "An ornithopod oddity," says,
>
> "Proof is a supposed hypsilophodontid thigh bone now known to have been *Troödon*'s. The owner of the bone seems to have had unusually small, four-toed feet."
>
> What had really happened, was that bones of an actual ornithischian had
> been combined with the bones of a troodontid. IIRC, this was discovered after
> the book was published.

And that one too?

On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 6:03:13 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 7/26/23 2:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> >> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
> >>> It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
> >>> which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
> >>> a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
> >>> so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
> >>> the book is richly endowed.
> >
> >> Time for an update:
> >
> >> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs
> >
> > Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
> > who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.
> >
> > I do have question: are there any books that give information
> > on newer discoveries since 2017, the publication date of this Princeton Guide?

Don't you know of any, John? Keep in mind my next sentence:

> > They do not have to be of the same caliber, of course.
> >
> >
> >>> On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
> >>> (dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
> >>> the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
> >>> grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
> >>> with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found.
> >>> The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
> >>>
> >>> (1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
> >>> about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
> >>>
> >>> (2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
> >>> or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
> >>> [If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
> >>> interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.]
> >>> A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
> >>>
> >>> (3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
> >>>
> >>> The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
> >>> "are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
> >>>
> >>> "Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
> >>> [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]
> >
> >> Gregory Paul:
> >> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
> >> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
> >> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."
> >
> > This is in the book linked above, right?
> >
> > The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
> > First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
> > in the same way that bats are therapsids."

> They're the same thing,

What does that mean? You aren't being at all clear here.

> and using mammals clarifies things even if you
> don't know what therapsids are.

"clarified" is the wrong word where the second, much more important inaccuracy (see below)
is concerned. Besides, just how is it supposed to clarify things for someone
who isn't completely familiar with the "are = are descended from" jargon?

> > Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
> > that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
> > was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
> > Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
> > victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
> > the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
> > and in their cladistic meaning.

> I don't see the redefinition as all that radical. Nor is it at all clear
> how you would quantify "the same size morphospace".

That's a job for the people who are researching it, using
some quantitative measure of disparity.

>I would intuitively
> suppose that dinosaurs occupy somewhat less morphospace than therapsids,
> since there is nothing like a dinosaur whale or any other aquatic mammal.

You forgot penguins. And many other recent "dinosaurs".

Or if you want a different standard: where's your example of a non-mammalian therapsid whale,
or an aquatic one?

If you want an aquatic example of what I call a dinosaur,
why doesn't Spinosaurus qualify?

> > Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
> > reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
> > the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
> > To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
> > added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
> > This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
> > which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

<snip of things to be addressed in next reply>

> > In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
> > cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
> > can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
> > "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
> > called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
> > word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
> > is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.

> Actually, there is no general agreement on whether to use Neornithes or
> Aves for the crown group. I happen to prefer Aves, but I think
> Neornithes is actually more common. Avialae is something else. And of
> course "birds" is not a technical term at all. I'm actually not quite
> sure what you're complaining about or what it has to do with Paul.

Isn't it obvious? I'm talking about the lack of agreed characters
for what constitutes a bird OR Avialae, now that "feathers"
has been cast adrift. Gautier proposed the descriptive name "Aviremiges"
for species with volant feathered ancestors, but for some
reason that name has not been adopted for any clade.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 7/27/23 9:43 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 6:03:13 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 7/26/23 2:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>>>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
>>>>> It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
>>>>> which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
>>>>> a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
>>>>> so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
>>>>> the book is richly endowed.
>>>
>>>> Time for an update:
>>>
>>>> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs
>>>
>>> Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
>>> who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.
>>>
>>> I do have question: are there any books that give information
>>> on newer discoveries since 2017, the publication date of this Princeton Guide?
>
> Don't you know of any, John? Keep in mind my next sentence:

I don't.

>>> They do not have to be of the same caliber, of course.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
>>>>> (dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
>>>>> the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
>>>>> grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
>>>>> with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found.
>>>>> The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
>>>>>
>>>>> (1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
>>>>> about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
>>>>>
>>>>> (2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
>>>>> or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
>>>>> [If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
>>>>> interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.]
>>>>> A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
>>>>>
>>>>> (3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
>>>>>
>>>>> The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
>>>>> "are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
>>>>> [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]
>>>
>>>> Gregory Paul:
>>>> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
>>>> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
>>>> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."
>>>
>>> This is in the book linked above, right?
>>>
>>> The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
>>> First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
>>> in the same way that bats are therapsids."
>
>> They're the same thing,
>
> What does that mean? You aren't being at all clear here.

I mean that "bats are therapsids" is not significantly different in
import from "bats are mammals", certainly not different enough to
complain about the latter being a poor comparison.

>> and using mammals clarifies things even if you
>> don't know what therapsids are.
>
> "clarified" is the wrong word where the second, much more important inaccuracy (see below)
> is concerned. Besides, just how is it supposed to clarify things for someone
> who isn't completely familiar with the "are = are descended from" jargon?

It clarifies especially for those people, because they know that bats
aren't just descended from mammals, they are mammals. It makes sense of
the statement "birds are dinosaurs".

>>> Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
>>> that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
>>> was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
>>> Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
>>> victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
>>> the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
>>> and in their cladistic meaning.
>
>
>> I don't see the redefinition as all that radical. Nor is it at all clear
>> how you would quantify "the same size morphospace".
>
> That's a job for the people who are researching it, using
> some quantitative measure of disparity.

I bet there aren't any such people. It's not a meaningful scientific
question.

>> I would intuitively
>> suppose that dinosaurs occupy somewhat less morphospace than therapsids,
>> since there is nothing like a dinosaur whale or any other aquatic mammal.
>
> You forgot penguins. And many other recent "dinosaurs".

I was of course referring there to the paraphyletic group of non-avian
dinosaurs, as I was responding to you using your definition.

> Or if you want a different standard: where's your example of a non-mammalian therapsid whale,
> or an aquatic one?
>
> If you want an aquatic example of what I call a dinosaur,
> why doesn't Spinosaurus qualify?

Spinosaurus is only slightly aquatic. It probably waded but did not
swim. And it doesn't enlarge the dinosaur morphospace much at all.

>>> Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
>>> reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
>>> the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
>>> To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
>>> added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
>>> This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
>>> which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.
>
>
> <snip of things to be addressed in next reply>
>
>
>>> In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
>>> cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
>>> can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
>>> "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
>>> called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
>>> word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
>>> is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.
>
>> Actually, there is no general agreement on whether to use Neornithes or
>> Aves for the crown group. I happen to prefer Aves, but I think
>> Neornithes is actually more common. Avialae is something else. And of
>> course "birds" is not a technical term at all. I'm actually not quite
>> sure what you're complaining about or what it has to do with Paul.
>
> Isn't it obvious? I'm talking about the lack of agreed characters
> for what constitutes a bird OR Avialae, now that "feathers"
> has been cast adrift. Gautier proposed the descriptive name "Aviremiges"
> for species with volant feathered ancestors, but for some
> reason that name has not been adopted for any clade.

No, it wasn't at all obvious, since you didn't mention characters at
all. "Bird" is of course not a scientific term and so needs no
agreement. Avialae has a phylogenetic definition, so no character-based
definition is needed.

On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 6:03:13 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 7/26/23 2:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Repeating a paragraph from my first reply, for context.

> > Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
> > reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
> > the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
> > To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
> > added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
> > This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
> > which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

> There are plenty of other characters;

Not diagnostic others.

> 7 cervical vertebrae,

Incorrect.
"Sloths are unusual among mammals in not having seven cervical vertebrae. Two-toed sloths have five to seven, while three-toed sloths have eight or nine. The other mammals not having seven are the manatees, with six.[23]"
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth

Yet, Xenarthans (which include sloths) are widely thought to be basal among Placentalia.
And I wonder how complete the list is. Carroll's _Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution_
talks a lot about the numbering of vertebrae of *Morganucodon* but is mum about the
number of its cervical vertebrae.

> movement of
> the quadrate and articular to the middle ear,

That's just the flip side of the dentary being the only
lower jaw bone. How often have you heard of those delicate
bones being found in fossils in the absence of the dentary?

> double occipital condyle,

That's a plesimorphy. In fact, the double condyle of synapsids
isn't even homologous to the single condyle of sauropsids.

> single set of deciduous teeth,

Not of much help in monotremes. There is no sign of teeth in
echidnas, and the other monotremes seem to have only one
set of teeth, deciduous in the extant platypus, apparently permanent
in the aptly named extinct *Obdurodon*.

> etc. Doubtless many others, but that's
> what I think of immediately. Then again, some of these diagnose a higher
> taxon than Mammalia under the popular crown group definition.

It isn't even clear which higher taxon is being diagnosed:
I don't think any two distinct characters above diagnose the same clade
or even close ones.

In contrast, I think it might be safe to use the migration of the
quadrate and articular as a proxy for development of hair and
mammary glands. The idea here is that, as dinosaurs became
more and more adept hunters, the majority of mammals became
nocturnal, hence the need for warm body covering. Simultaneously,
to prevent discovery during daytime, it was important to
have a ready supply of food for babies that might otherwise clamor for it.

I will reply to the rest of what you wrote on another thread that
I started earlier today, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate".

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 7/27/23 2:58 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 6:03:13 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 7/26/23 2:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Repeating a paragraph from my first reply, for context.
>
>>> Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
>>> reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
>>> the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
>>> To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
>>> added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
>>> This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
>>> which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.
>
>
>> There are plenty of other characters;
>
> Not diagnostic others.
>
> > 7 cervical vertebrae,
>
> Incorrect.
> "Sloths are unusual among mammals in not having seven cervical vertebrae. Two-toed sloths have five to seven, while three-toed sloths have eight or nine. The other mammals not having seven are the manatees, with six.[23]"
> -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth
>
> Yet, Xenarthans (which include sloths) are widely thought to be basal among Placentalia.
> And I wonder how complete the list is. Carroll's _Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution_
> talks a lot about the numbering of vertebrae of *Morganucodon* but is mum about the
> number of its cervical vertebrae.

A diagnostic character doesn't have to be entirely free of variation. It
just has to change at the proper node and be mostly conserved.

>> movement of
>> the quadrate and articular to the middle ear,
>
> That's just the flip side of the dentary being the only
> lower jaw bone. How often have you heard of those delicate
> bones being found in fossils in the absence of the dentary?

No it isn't. There are many ways in which the articular could have left
the lower jaw, and the quadrate isn't included.

> > double occipital condyle,
>
> That's a plesimorphy. In fact, the double condyle of synapsids
> isn't even homologous to the single condyle of sauropsids.

Could be. Not sure exactly where it evolved. But it would surprise me if
the condyles weren't homologous. Where do you get that?

>> single set of deciduous teeth,
>
> Not of much help in monotremes. There is no sign of teeth in
> echidnas, and the other monotremes seem to have only one
> set of teeth, deciduous in the extant platypus, apparently permanent
> in the aptly named extinct *Obdurodon*.

You don't think the ancestral montreme would have had deciduous teeth?

>> etc. Doubtless many others, but that's
>> what I think of immediately. Then again, some of these diagnose a higher
>> taxon than Mammalia under the popular crown group definition.
>
> It isn't even clear which higher taxon is being diagnosed:
> I don't think any two distinct characters above diagnose the same clade
> or even close ones.

Perhaps. What do you know about this?

> In contrast, I think it might be safe to use the migration of the
> quadrate and articular as a proxy for development of hair and
> mammary glands. The idea here is that, as dinosaurs became
> more and more adept hunters, the majority of mammals became
> nocturnal, hence the need for warm body covering. Simultaneously,
> to prevent discovery during daytime, it was important to
> have a ready supply of food for babies that might otherwise clamor for it.

That's the sort of just-so story that gave the practice a bad name. It
could be true, but there's no reason to suppose it is.

> I will reply to the rest of what you wrote on another thread that
> I started earlier today, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate".
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
> Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>

On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20?AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
>> >It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
>> >which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
>> >a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
>> >so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
>> >the book is richly endowed.
>
>> Time for an update:
>
>> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs
>
>Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
>who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.
>
>I do have question: are there any books that give information
>on newer discoveries since 2017, the publication date of this Princeton Guide?
>They do not have to be of the same caliber, of course.

There's a hefty tome from Lynx about sauropodomorfs, published in
2022, in Spanish:
https://www.lynxeds.com/product/records-y-curiosidades-de-los-dinosaurios/

Maybe they'll treat theropods and ornithischians in later volumes.

>> >On the 40th page, after some general information about sundry things
>> >(dinosaur diversity, dinosaur physiology, family life, evolution from the first tetrapods),
>> >the book takes on the general spirit of a Peterson's Guide, with dinosaurs
>> >grouped as to their suborder or family (or somewhere in between), and
>> >with very clear illustrations of various sorts that take up about half of every page on average.
>> >
>> >
>> >Maps are provided on most pages showing where the remains of each genus featured are to be found.
>> >The illustrations are mostly of three kinds:
>> >
>> >(1) small silhouettes of several dinosaurs, drawn to scale, talked
>> >about on the same page or on neighboring ones; and
>> >
>> >(2) large, detailed reproductions of individual dinosaurs, or their skeletons,
>> >or heads or skulls or other body parts if that is all we have to go on.
>> >[If a head, for instance, is shown, it could be that the dinosaur was
>> >interesting enough to find a forensic expert to go by muscle attachments, etc. to the skull.]
>> > A lot of skilled artistry obviously went into making most of these reproductions very lifelike.
>> >
>> >(3) smaller, almost cartoon-like drawings, but still quite lifelike.
>> >
>> >The author is not yet committed to the widespread jargon that makes
>> >"are" and "are descended from" indistinguishable:
>> >
>> >"Such comparisons make most scientists think that birds evolved from coelurosaurs. Some argue that birds *are* dinosaurs -- continuing to thrive for over 60 million years after all the rest died out."
>> > [p. 52, where Archaeopteryx is introduced.]
>
>> Gregory Paul:
>> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
>> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
>> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."
>
>This is in the book linked above, right?
>
>The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
>First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
>in the same way that bats are therapsids."

It's not inaccurate, it's just that Mammalia is a crown clade while
Dinosauria is not, as per definition:
Baron et al. (2017) define Dinosauria as the least inclusive clade
that includes Passer domesticus, Triceratops horridus and Diplodocus
carnegii.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21700

(In Phylonyms Dinosauria is defined as the smallest clade containing
Iguanodon bernissartensis (Ornithischia/Euornithopoda), Megalosaurus
bucklandii (Theropoda/Megalosauroidea) and Cetiosaurus oxoniensis
(Sauropodomorpha)).

In Phylonyms Mammalia is defined as the smallest crown clade
containing Homo sapiens (Placentalia), Didelphis marsupialis
(Marsupialia), and Tachyglossus aculeatus (Monotremata).
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9780429446276/phylonyms-kevin-de-queiroz-philip-cantino-jacques-gauthier

The point is that bats (Chiroptera) and birds (Aves) are both
subclades within certain more inclusive clades, Mammalia and
Dinosauria respectively.
>Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
>that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
>was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
>Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
>victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
>the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
>and in their cladistic meaning.
>
>Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
>reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
>the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair.
>To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
>added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
>This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
>which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

See the section "Diagnostic Apomorphies", page 859 in Phylonyms.
"Even when fossils are considered, Mammalia can be distinguished from
its closest extinct relatives by many features of the skeleton."

>In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
>cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
>can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
>"Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
>called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
>word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
>is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.

It's always going to be arbitrary to some degree, because in
evolutionary reality there is no clear-cut dichotomy between avian and
non-avian. See the paper by Andrea Cau:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324941372_The_assembly_of_the_avian_body_plan_A_160-million-year_long_process

>[Gregory Paul again:]
>> This usage can become awkward,
>> and in general in this book dinosaurs that are not birds
>> are, with some exceptions, referred to simply as dinosaurs."
>
>> >The picture of "Archie" is very detailed and shows Ostrom's concept of the
>> >feathered wing catching an insect. On the next page, the author favors
>> >the hypothesis that "Archie" was a weak flier, and the controversial
>> >hypothesis that feathers evolved to trap body heat, and that
>> >
>> >"Archeopteryx had merely evolved feathers that were also shaped and grouped for flight."
>> >
>> >This needs to be compared with the accurate, detailed illustration
>> >showing "Archie" with asymmetrical flight remiges.
>> >
>> >
>> >NEXT: The biggest mis-classification in the book is interesting for a
>> >number of different reasons. A minor one is that none of the people
>> >who contributed to the book is at all to blame for it.
>
>I will make that next installment after I get home tonight and have
>the book handy again.
>
>
>> Ever heard of aveairfoilan theropods?
>
>The word is unfamiliar, but I would guess it refers to a most remarkable dinosaur,
>Qi Yi, and its close relatives.

Gregory Paul:

AVEAIRFOILANS

"SMALL TO GIGANTIC PREDATORY AND
HERBIVOROUS PARAVIANS OF THE LATE
JURASSIC TO THE END OF THE DINOSAUR
ERA (WITH BIRDS SURVIVING BEYOND), MOST
CONTINENTS.

ANATOMICAL CHARACTERISTICS Highly variable.
Head toothed to toothless and beaked; when teeth are
present, serrations tend to be reduced in some manner
or absent. Tail very long to very short. Shoulder girdle
usually like that in birds, with horizontal scapula blade
and vertical, anterior-facing coracoid, furcula often large,
arm very long to short, wrist usually with a large, halfmoon-
shaped carpal block that allowed arm to be folded
like bird’s, hand usually long. Brains enlarged, semiavian
in form. Pennaceous feathers often present. Overall
appearance very birdlike.
ONTOGENY Growth rates apparently moderate.
HABITS Reproduction generally similar to that of ratites
and tinamous; in at least some cases males incubated the
eggs and were probably polygamous; egg hatching in a
given clutch not synchronous.
NOTES Paravians with feather wings or ancestors with
same that are in the clade that includes extant birds.
Prone to evolving and especially losing flight,
perhaps repeating cycle in some cases."

On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 7:50:19 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 10:01:20?AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> >> On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:31:11 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >This 1983 book, by David Lambert, has long been one of my favorite paleontology books.
> >> >It is subtitled, "The first complete guide to every dinosaur known,"
> >> >which may well have been true at the time. It is illustrated by
> >> >a team of 10 artists, an art assistant, and an art director, and
> >> >so there are a lot of individual styles in the illustrations, with which
> >> >the book is richly endowed.
> >
> >> Time for an update:
> >
> >> https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167664/the-princeton-field-guide-to-dinosaurs
> >
> >Thanks, Pandora. It looks very interesting. Since I'm not the only one in my family
> >who is fascinated by dinosaurs, I believe I will get a copy, despite a quibble that I engage in below.

Update: I see that the third edition is due next year, and its price is reasonable,
so I decided to get _The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_ instead,
which I found out about when it was suggested on the main page of the Dinosaur field guide.

It's a book I've been hoping for more than a decade : a much needed
update to the 1991 "Gold standard" of pterosaur writing.
This is _The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs_, by Dr. Peter Wellnhofer.
I can see from the description of the "field guide" that is only a supplement,
and is far from rivaling Wellnhofer's masterpiece, whose one shortcoming
is the drab colors (gray and brown) used in illustrating guesses at what these
amazing creatures look like. I've seen otherwise excellent books go to
the opposite extreme, not just for pterosaurs but also for dinosaurs,
and I hope that this "field guide" will avoid both extremes.
The picture on the dust cover of the "field guide" gives me hope that
this is indeed the case.

<snip for focus>

> >
> >> Gregory Paul:
> >> "Because birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are
> >> mammals, the dinosaurs aside from birds are sometimes referred
> >> to as "nonavian dinosaurs."
> >
> >This is in the book linked above, right?
> >
> >The opening clause is inaccurate on two counts.
> >First, the most accurate analogy would say "...birds are dinosaurs
> >in the same way that bats are therapsids."

> It's not inaccurate, it's just that Mammalia is a crown clade while
> Dinosauria is not, as per definition:

IMO, this only supports my case as to what the *most* accurate analogy is.

Thanks for the details below. Harshman dropped the ball on providing some.

>
> Baron et al. (2017) define Dinosauria as the least inclusive clade
> that includes Passer domesticus, Triceratops horridus and Diplodocus
> carnegii.
> https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21700

The following definition is better: it hedges the bets as to whether
Ornithischia or Sauropoda is the sister group of Theropoda.
I think this is still a matter of controversy.

> (In Phylonyms Dinosauria is defined as the smallest clade containing
> Iguanodon bernissartensis (Ornithischia/Euornithopoda), Megalosaurus
> bucklandii (Theropoda/Megalosauroidea) and Cetiosaurus oxoniensis
> (Sauropodomorpha)).

I've known for a long time that Mammalia is a crown group, but
it's nice to know about Phylonyms.

> In Phylonyms Mammalia is defined as the smallest crown clade
> containing Homo sapiens (Placentalia), Didelphis marsupialis
> (Marsupialia), and Tachyglossus aculeatus (Monotremata).
> https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9780429446276/phylonyms-kevin-de-queiroz-philip-cantino-jacques-gauthier

As expected, it is too expensive for me to justify getting it now:
over a dozen times as expensive as the pterosaur book:

> The point is that bats (Chiroptera) and birds (Aves) are both
> subclades within certain more inclusive clades, Mammalia and
> Dinosauria respectively.

A trivial similarity, not the stuff of which good analogies are made.

> >Both Dinosauria and Therapsida are traditional paraphyletic groups
> >that predated the breakup of Reptilia, although Dinosauria
> >was not accepted until it became clear that it was not polyphyletic.
> >Both have been radically redefined after the undeserved total
> >victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," but they occupy roughly
> >the same size morphospace, both in their traditional meaning
> >and in their cladistic meaning.
> >
> >Much more importantly, Gregory Paul is using an incomplete phylogenetic
> >reason for bats being mammals. For over two centuries,
> >the reason was that bats both suckle their young with milk and have hair..
> >To these major apomorphies of Mammalia, the last century (or more?)
> >added the possession of a single lower jawbone, the dentary.
> >This has the huge advantage of being applicable to fossils,
> >which very rarely preserve hair and essentially never preserve mammary glands.

> See the section "Diagnostic Apomorphies", page 859 in Phylonyms.
> "Even when fossils are considered, Mammalia can be distinguished from
> its closest extinct relatives by many features of the skeleton."

Like Morganucodon? It was disappointing to see its exclusion
from the crown group, what with so much detailed information
about it in another old (and still far above more recent books) Gold Standard,
Carroll's 1988 _Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution_.

Can you tell us about some characters that led to its exclusion from Mammalia?
What was wrong with Carroll's inclusion in Triconodonta?

Continued in next reply, where the focus shifts to birds.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 7:50:19 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

Picking up where I left off in my first reply to your helpful post:

> >In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
> >cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
> >can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
> >"Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
> >called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
> >word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
> >is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.

> It's always going to be arbitrary to some degree, because in
> evolutionary reality there is no clear-cut dichotomy between avian and
> non-avian.

Sure, but I'm talking specifically about Avialae, for which the definition
does not seem to be settled. What does Phylonyms say about it?

Here is Wikipedia's take on it:
"Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below)."

The following paragraph even leaves "Archie" up in the air as to whether it belongs
according to this "usual" definition.

Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is usually considered the earliest known avialan which may have had the capability of powered flight,[2] a minority of studies have suggested that it might have been a deinonychosaur instead.[3]

[3] This is a real outlier!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626525/
I talked about it last year [A] although I did not address how much of an outlier it was.
In figures 17 and 18, it places *Archaeopteryx* outside Avialae,
seemingly [B] deep within Deinonychosauria, while putting *Yi* *qi* inside!
I have been talking about *Yi* in the thread, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate,"
about how its wing structure is very different from that of Archie and all Avialans.

[A] I recognized the paper as soon as I saw that one of the co-authors was
amateur paleontologist "Mickey Mortimer."

[B] If you swivel the phylogenetic trees 180 degrees just below "Archie",
it comes to rest adjacent to *Yi* *qi* and other scansoriopterygids,
but still outside Avialae and inside Deinonychosauria.

See the paper by Andrea Cau:
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324941372_The_assembly_of_the_avian_body_plan_A_160-million-year_long_process

I have doubts about the following claim in the abstract:

`The second phase ("Ostromian stage": second half of Jurassic) is characterised by a higher evolutionary rate, the loss of hypercarnivory, the enlargement of the braincase, the dramatic reduction of the caudofemoral module, and the development of true pennaceous feathers. The transition to powered flight was achieved only in the third phase ("Marshian stage": Cretaceous),

Archaeopteryx (in the "Ostromian stage") had asymmetrical flight remiges, and its hind legs
and tail also sported feathers that could assist greatly in flight. I see no reason why it
should not have been capable of powered flight.

The article makes no mention of these anatomical features, and
comes across as excessively argumentative and philosophical
rather than scientific in the body of the text. I did, of course, appreciate
the phylogenetic trees. Trivia: the one on the right puts "Archie"
right next to *Yi*, and makes it the sister taxon of the huge
clade that includes all "third stage birds" and has *Rahonavis*
as its basal member.

I also appreciated seeing a reference, after all these decades, to the opening quote:

`Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded.
Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words,
“Behold Plato’s man!”(Diogenes Laërtius, in Hicks, 1925, p. 4 '

One source I saw, before I turned 15, went on to say that Plato
amended his description by adding "with flat nails". Nobody
at that time knew of sifakas, indris and avahis -- lemurs which legitimately
have all three of Plato's "diagnostic" characters of *Homo*.

Concluded in next reply.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

On 8/2/23 1:29 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 7:50:19 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Picking up where I left off in my first reply to your helpful post:
>
>>> In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
>>> cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
>>> can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
>>> "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
>>> called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
>>> word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
>>> is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.
>
>> It's always going to be arbitrary to some degree, because in
>> evolutionary reality there is no clear-cut dichotomy between avian and
>> non-avian.
>
> Sure, but I'm talking specifically about Avialae, for which the definition
> does not seem to be settled. What does Phylonyms say about it?
>
> Here is Wikipedia's take on it:
> "Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below)."
>
> The following paragraph even leaves "Archie" up in the air as to whether it belongs
> according to this "usual" definition.
>
> Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is usually considered the earliest known avialan which may have had the capability of powered flight,[2] a minority of studies have suggested that it might have been a deinonychosaur instead.[3]
>
> [3] This is a real outlier!
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626525/
> I talked about it last year [A] although I did not address how much of an outlier it was.
> In figures 17 and 18, it places *Archaeopteryx* outside Avialae,
> seemingly [B] deep within Deinonychosauria, while putting *Yi* *qi* inside!
> I have been talking about *Yi* in the thread, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate,"
> about how its wing structure is very different from that of Archie and all Avialans.
>
> [A] I recognized the paper as soon as I saw that one of the co-authors was
> amateur paleontologist "Mickey Mortimer."
>
> [B] If you swivel the phylogenetic trees 180 degrees just below "Archie",
> it comes to rest adjacent to *Yi* *qi* and other scansoriopterygids,
> but still outside Avialae and inside Deinonychosauria.

I wouldn't make too much of that. From the paper: "As in Xu et al.
(2011) we recover archaeopterygids as deinonychosaurs, but both the
traditional Archaeopteryx position closer to Aves and the common
Anchiornis position sister to troodontids require a single additional
step each."

In other words, the single branch you're worried about here has almost
no support. If they had tried any measure of branch support there would
likely be several polytomies on that tree. You should always look into
the support for a tree.

> See the paper by Andrea Cau:
>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324941372_The_assembly_of_the_avian_body_plan_A_160-million-year_long_process
>
> I have doubts about the following claim in the abstract:
>
> `The second phase ("Ostromian stage": second half of Jurassic) is characterised by a higher evolutionary rate, the loss of hypercarnivory, the enlargement of the braincase, the dramatic reduction of the caudofemoral module, and the development of true pennaceous feathers. The transition to powered flight was achieved only in the third phase ("Marshian stage": Cretaceous),
>
> Archaeopteryx (in the "Ostromian stage") had asymmetrical flight remiges, and its hind legs
> and tail also sported feathers that could assist greatly in flight. I see no reason why it
> should not have been capable of powered flight.
>
> The article makes no mention of these anatomical features, and
> comes across as excessively argumentative and philosophical
> rather than scientific in the body of the text. I did, of course, appreciate
> the phylogenetic trees. Trivia: the one on the right puts "Archie"
> right next to *Yi*, and makes it the sister taxon of the huge
> clade that includes all "third stage birds" and has *Rahonavis*
> as its basal member.
>
> I also appreciated seeing a reference, after all these decades, to the opening quote:
>
> `Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded.
> Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words,
> “Behold Plato’s man!”(Diogenes Laërtius, in Hicks, 1925, p. 4 '
>
> One source I saw, before I turned 15, went on to say that Plato
> amended his description by adding "with flat nails". Nobody
> at that time knew of sifakas, indris and avahis -- lemurs which legitimately
> have all three of Plato's "diagnostic" characters of *Homo*.
>
>
> Concluded in next reply.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of So. Carolina in Columbia
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>

On Wednesday, August 2, 2023 at 5:02:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/2/23 1:29 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 7:50:19 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> >> On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> > <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Picking up where I left off in my first reply to your helpful post:
> >
> >>> In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
> >>> cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
> >>> can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
> >>> "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
> >>> called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
> >>> word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
> >>> is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.
> >
> >> It's always going to be arbitrary to some degree, because in
> >> evolutionary reality there is no clear-cut dichotomy between avian and
> >> non-avian.
> >
> > Sure, but I'm talking specifically about Avialae, for which the definition
> > does not seem to be settled. What does Phylonyms say about it?
> >
> > Here is Wikipedia's take on it:
> > "Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below)."
> >
> > The following paragraph even leaves "Archie" up in the air as to whether it belongs
> > according to this "usual" definition.
> >
> > Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is usually considered the earliest known avialan which may have had the capability of powered flight,[2] a minority of studies have suggested that it might have been a deinonychosaur instead.[3]
> >
> > [3] This is a real outlier!
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626525/
> > I talked about it last year [A] although I did not address how much of an outlier it was.
> > In figures 17 and 18, it places *Archaeopteryx* outside Avialae,
> > seemingly [B] deep within Deinonychosauria, while putting *Yi* *qi* inside!
> > I have been talking about *Yi* in the thread, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate,"
> > about how its wing structure is very different from that of Archie and all Avialans.
> >
> > [A] I recognized the paper as soon as I saw that one of the co-authors was
> > amateur paleontologist "Mickey Mortimer."
> >
> > [B] If you swivel the phylogenetic trees 180 degrees just below "Archie",
> > it comes to rest adjacent to *Yi* *qi* and other scansoriopterygids,
> > but still outside Avialae and inside Deinonychosauria.

> I wouldn't make too much of that. From the paper: "As in Xu et al.
> (2011) we recover archaeopterygids as deinonychosaurs, but both the
> traditional Archaeopteryx position closer to Aves and the common
> Anchiornis position sister to troodontids require a single additional
> step each."
>
> In other words, the single branch you're worried about here has almost
> no support. If they had tried any measure of branch support there would
> likely be several polytomies on that tree. You should always look into
> the support for a tree.

Thanks, but all this does not affect my main problem, emphasized several times above:
I do not know what the official _Phylonyms_ definition for Avialae is.

Do you have access to a copy of the book? I've been hoping that Pandora would tell me
what it says about that clade, but so far she hasn't answered.

You didn't comment on something I wrote below. I'd appreciate it if you could
say something about it, what with ornithology being your specialty.

> > See the paper by Andrea Cau:
> >> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324941372_The_assembly_of_the_avian_body_plan_A_160-million-year_long_process
> >
> > I have doubts about the following claim in the abstract:
> >
> > `The second phase ("Ostromian stage": second half of Jurassic) is characterised by a higher evolutionary rate, the loss of hypercarnivory, the enlargement of the braincase, the dramatic reduction of the caudofemoral module, and the development of true pennaceous feathers. The transition to powered flight was achieved only in the third phase ("Marshian stage": Cretaceous),

Here comes what I am referring to above:

> > Archaeopteryx (in the "Ostromian stage") had asymmetrical flight remiges, and its hind legs
> > and tail also sported feathers that could assist greatly in flight. I see no reason why it
> > should not have been capable of powered flight.

This is relevant to something I read in _The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_,
which arrived during the weekend. The author claims that it is wrong to categorize
"flying squirrels," "flying lemurs," "flying fish," etc. as "gliders, not flyers" even though
they do not have what *I* would call "powered flight."

OTOH I would characterize "Archie" and "Anchiornis* as having powered flight.
Of the latter, Feduccia writes in his _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_
that Anchiornis probably was a weak flier like the modern day kakopo.

What's your opinion on this, John? For instance, how would you compare the flying
ability of "Archie" with that of tinamous?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

> > The article makes no mention of these anatomical features, and
> > comes across as excessively argumentative and philosophical
> > rather than scientific in the body of the text. I did, of course, appreciate
> > the phylogenetic trees. Trivia: the one on the right puts "Archie"
> > right next to *Yi*, and makes it the sister taxon of the huge
> > clade that includes all "third stage birds" and has *Rahonavis*
> > as its basal member.
> >
> > I also appreciated seeing a reference, after all these decades, to the opening quote:
> >
> > `Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded.
> > Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words,
> > “Behold Plato’s man!”(Diogenes Laërtius, in Hicks, 1925, p. 4 '
> >
> > One source I saw, before I turned 15, went on to say that Plato
> > amended his description by adding "with flat nails". Nobody
> > at that time knew of sifakas, indris and avahis -- lemurs which legitimately
> > have all three of Plato's "diagnostic" characters of *Homo*.
> >
> >
> > Concluded in next reply.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of So. Carolina in Columbia
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >

On 8/7/23 10:35 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 2, 2023 at 5:02:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 8/2/23 1:29 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 7:50:19 AM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:21:39 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
>>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Picking up where I left off in my first reply to your helpful post:
>>>
>>>>> In contrast, there is considerable arbitrariness about where the
>>>>> cutoff point is between "avian" and "non-avian." The very words
>>>>> can cause confusion, because the ideologues who dominate systematics have commandeered
>>>>> "Aves" to designate what has been much more logically and etymologically
>>>>> called "Neornithes". It seems that most ornithologists are happy with the
>>>>> word "Avialae" as the synonym for birds. Now "all" we need to figure out
>>>>> is what belongs in Avialae, and what does not, and why.
>>>
>>>> It's always going to be arbitrary to some degree, because in
>>>> evolutionary reality there is no clear-cut dichotomy between avian and
>>>> non-avian.
>>>
>>> Sure, but I'm talking specifically about Avialae, for which the definition
>>> does not seem to be settled. What does Phylonyms say about it?
>>>
>>> Here is Wikipedia's take on it:
>>> "Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below)."
>>>
>>> The following paragraph even leaves "Archie" up in the air as to whether it belongs
>>> according to this "usual" definition.
>>>
>>> Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is usually considered the earliest known avialan which may have had the capability of powered flight,[2] a minority of studies have suggested that it might have been a deinonychosaur instead.[3]
>>>
>>> [3] This is a real outlier!
>>> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626525/
>>> I talked about it last year [A] although I did not address how much of an outlier it was.
>>> In figures 17 and 18, it places *Archaeopteryx* outside Avialae,
>>> seemingly [B] deep within Deinonychosauria, while putting *Yi* *qi* inside!
>>> I have been talking about *Yi* in the thread, "A Fourth Kind of Flying Vertebrate,"
>>> about how its wing structure is very different from that of Archie and all Avialans.
>>>
>>> [A] I recognized the paper as soon as I saw that one of the co-authors was
>>> amateur paleontologist "Mickey Mortimer."
>>>
>>> [B] If you swivel the phylogenetic trees 180 degrees just below "Archie",
>>> it comes to rest adjacent to *Yi* *qi* and other scansoriopterygids,
>>> but still outside Avialae and inside Deinonychosauria.
>
>> I wouldn't make too much of that. From the paper: "As in Xu et al.
>> (2011) we recover archaeopterygids as deinonychosaurs, but both the
>> traditional Archaeopteryx position closer to Aves and the common
>> Anchiornis position sister to troodontids require a single additional
>> step each."
>>
>> In other words, the single branch you're worried about here has almost
>> no support. If they had tried any measure of branch support there would
>> likely be several polytomies on that tree. You should always look into
>> the support for a tree.
>
> Thanks, but all this does not affect my main problem, emphasized several times above:
> I do not know what the official _Phylonyms_ definition for Avialae is.
>
> Do you have access to a copy of the book? I've been hoping that Pandora would tell me
> what it says about that clade, but so far she hasn't answered.

I don't.

> You didn't comment on something I wrote below. I'd appreciate it if you could
> say something about it, what with ornithology being your specialty.
>
>>> See the paper by Andrea Cau:
>>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324941372_The_assembly_of_the_avian_body_plan_A_160-million-year_long_process
>>>
>>> I have doubts about the following claim in the abstract:
>>>
>>> `The second phase ("Ostromian stage": second half of Jurassic) is characterised by a higher evolutionary rate, the loss of hypercarnivory, the enlargement of the braincase, the dramatic reduction of the caudofemoral module, and the development of true pennaceous feathers. The transition to powered flight was achieved only in the third phase ("Marshian stage": Cretaceous),
>
> Here comes what I am referring to above:
>
>>> Archaeopteryx (in the "Ostromian stage") had asymmetrical flight remiges, and its hind legs
>>> and tail also sported feathers that could assist greatly in flight. I see no reason why it
>>> should not have been capable of powered flight.
>
> This is relevant to something I read in _The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_,
> which arrived during the weekend. The author claims that it is wrong to categorize
> "flying squirrels," "flying lemurs," "flying fish," etc. as "gliders, not flyers" even though
> they do not have what *I* would call "powered flight."
>
> OTOH I would characterize "Archie" and "Anchiornis* as having powered flight.
> Of the latter, Feduccia writes in his _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_
> that Anchiornis probably was a weak flier like the modern day kakopo.

Puzzling, since kakapos are entirely flightless.

> What's your opinion on this, John? For instance, how would you compare the flying
> ability of "Archie" with that of tinamous?

Almost impossible to say. A glider could easily find asymmetrical flight
feathers advantageous, as they would result in a better lifting surface
with more control. A brain suited to control of wings would serve
equally for a glider as for a flyer. Archaeopteryx lacks something
present in all modern flyers: a keel and a tri-osseal canal, both
essential to flapping flight as currently practiced.

And there are intermediates. It's possible that it could flap for lift
and propulsion when in the air, or for just one of those. And it's
possible that it would be able to sustain its glide without being able
to climb, or would be able to fly once in the air but not to take off
under its own power. I don't see how we could tell any of that.