Dinosoar Feather Mystery

tht

Tonight, 4/5/04, the Science Channel has a show called "The Dinosoar Feather Mystery" where it will explore the evolution of feathers. 8 pm EST on your digital cable or satellite dish. Hint: they didn't evolve from scales. I love all those "Walking with..." and other paleontological shows.

rageous

sweet. the idea of dinosaurs evolving into birds has always fascinated me. thanks for the heads up.

thegelding

feathers always seemed much more like an evolution of hair than scales...did or do any reptiles have hair?? i personally can't think of a single hairly reptile....other than my boss at work that is....



g

moogs

Personally, I suspect the bird/feathers from Dinosaurs thing is one of those biological aberrations where they evolved from one very specialized branch of the dinosaur species. Sort of like that deal with Lucy (part of the whole "missing link" debate)... there were multiple branches of pi-pedal humanoids, that had very different characteristics, but lived at roughly the same time.



I don't think you can make the connection that all birds are related to all dinosaurs. At least not based on what I've seen.



Getting back to the missing link, I am pretty sure they've found evidence of this mysterious hominid at the Air Canada Center

airsluf

Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.



Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.



Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.

moogs

I'll let it slide. Just this once...



...but next next time...



...I'll ignore your nit-picking punk ass!









Let that be a lesson to you.

jimmac

Actually it's just the theropod group of dinosaurs that are suspected to have evolved into birds. Most of these were bipedal and carnivorous. They came in all sizes and T-Rex was a member.

tht

I thought the show was a rather poor production myself. The NOVA episode about the Coelocanth tonight was much more entertaining than the Dinosaur Feather Mystery. Maybe it was because I already knew most of the details, than again the NOVA ep was a rerun.



Otherwise, the technical content of the feather show was pretty interesting. The surprises seem endless with evolutionary predictions, yet in hindsight, are obvious. The theory that birds evolved from a 4-winged arboreal therapod is pretty cool. Or maybe that was an offshoot

stevegongrui

damn, I missed it.



Could someone please give me a brief summary on what they talked about? What DID feathers evolve from?

hardhead

I watched Nova's special on the coelacanth. Very well done.



Was the Science Channel show good? What came before Archaeopteryx? Was Archaeopteryx able to really fly? I don't have Science Channel. Bummer...

jimmac

Quote:

Originally posted by stevegongrui

damn, I missed it.



Could someone please give me a brief summary on what they talked about? What DID feathers evolve from?

Well I didn't see the program ( damn ) but from what I've read feathers are thought to have evolved from scales. They just serve a different purpose.





On a side note there's a hilarious DVD called " Chased By Dinosaurs " ( with Nigel Marvin ). He's sort of like the crocodile hunter ( " I'm just going to take a calculated risk here " ) only with dinosaurs. He talks about the evolution of feathers at one point. It's a BBC program like " Walking With Dinosaurs ".



Besides being very funny it's also very informative. Also it has really great CGI!

dmz

Other than speculation---how do these shows approach issues like scales-to-feathers?

tht

As I said in the very first post of this thread, the theory of feather evolution is turning away from a feathers-evolving-from-scales theory. For the past century, it was [probably] theorized that birds evolved from a reptilian ancestor, and therefore, feathers had to evolve from scales.



Over the last couple of decades however, especially the last 5, it has become increasing evident that birds evolved from a dinosaurian species, the therapods (T. Rex, velociraptors, etc). This is due to the many morphological similarities, including the arm movements of both.



The mystery of feather evolution was approached from two directions: evolutionary development (evo-devo) and fossil evidence. Evo-devo is a method of looking at the development of a particular feature of an animal (from embryo to full development) and extrapolating the evolutionary stages and features. The evo-devo theory is that feathers began as an outgrowth on the skin, a placode. Hair, scales, nails are also outgrowths of the skin. The placode outgrowth then is split into many different branches, then the branches develop their own little branches (a downy feather), then several of those (big) branches fuse together to form the rhacis (the barb of a feather), then the little branches develop barbules, those little velcro like hooks that keep the branches together. It's pretty much a "feather" after that.



As the evo-devo theory was being development, China was opening up its borders to outside paleontologists, and at one of the sites (Liaoning?), they found many many therapod dinosaurs with suspiciously-looking feathers. Some had rhacis feathers, some had downy feathers, some had body feathers, some had aerodynamic feathers. It indicated that therapods did indeed have feathers, velociraptors probably had barbs, were probably warm blooded, used the feathers as insulation and were the ancestors of birds. The evo-devo based theory appears correct.



The last question was about the competing theory of how these bird ancestors developed flight: running and jumping to catch insect prey or gliding from trees. The fossil evidence of one showed aerodynamic feathers on both the arms and legs indicating that flight was developed by gliding amongst the trees. Not surprising, since every animal species, and their brother, developed gliding techniques from jumping off trees.