11-06-2023, 06:40 AM
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Pixie's Resident Reptile
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Central MD, USA
Posts: 21,166
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Originally Posted by PantyFanatic
"................we conclude that C. sanctus could fly efficiently for prolonged periods of time when used a combination of flapping and gliding periods."
How does that differ from normal soaring birds today?  |
See, that's the point: it mostly wasn't. It's been argued for years that Conficiusornis was a clumsy flier, or even completely flightless, or maybe 'only' a glider, and not a true power flier. This is another bit of data we can gleen about the evolutionary history of powered flight.
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Originally Posted by Teddy Bear
Wonder what these super smart men get paid to look at a birds bones, and feathers, for months, maybe even years? I wonder if it would be more helpful to study why this bird was so well perserved? Why did it stay so still when the preservative was covering it. The wings show no sign of fight or struggle to get free. I wonder why there are no indications of wing movement in the background.
i mostly wonder why we need to know this
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Mostly good questions:
Not nearly enough, actually: the whole field of education in most areas is vastly underfunded, compared to the amount of money our society as a whole wastes on a bunch of other projects.
And the study of preservation of specimens, called Taphonomy, is actually a discipline, which plays an important part in the fields of geology and paleontology.
And it 'stayed still' while being covered because it was already dead. Don't really want to contemplate the idea of 110+million year old bird zombies.
And aside from merely filling our curiosity, study of the biodiversity of the past can inform us of the future. Might be good to know where we're going before we get there.
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