Alex: An interesting fact about raptors (technically, they’re known as dromaeosaurid deinonychosaurs, but “raptors” is a much simpler and cooler-sounding name
) is that among the dinosaurs, they are considered to be the most birdlike (though they lived too late in the age of dinosaurs to have been actual bird ancestors). The oft-toted “first bird”,
Archaeopteryx, is actually very closely related to raptors, and even possessed small sickle claws on its feet. Incidentally, it has been suggested that raptors may have been able to fly at one time, and that
Velociraptor and
Deinonychus are actually the flightless descendants of
Archaeopteryx-like creatures. The fact that many early raptors were arboreal and exhibited adaptations for gliding lends credence to this hypothesis. (If the theory is correct, then it could be said that, rather than evolving INTO birds, raptors evolved FROM them. :blink:)
Fossil evidence of feathers is not easy to come by, but there are numerous fossils of raptors and closely related dinosaurs preserved with skin impressions that definitively show that they were feathered. One specimen of the small Chinese raptor
Sinornithosaurus shows that its entire bodyósave for the fingers, jaws, and feetówas covered in fuzzy unbarbed feathers (similar to what you would see on an emu or
kiwi), with barbed, vaned feathers (similar to the feathers birds use for flight) on the arms, legs, and tail.
Velociraptor was also recently discovered to have small bumps on its arm bones, similar to the “quill knobs” on the wings of birds, to which large flight feathers attach.
Velociraptor certainly couldn’t fly, but the feathers could have been used to display to other raptors, for brooding its young (raptors probably sat on their nests like modern birds, and large feathers could have been used to help conceal the nest), or even for balance when the raptor was running on an incline.
(This is a big and complex topic, and I left out a lot of what I was originally going to say; if you want me to tell you more, just ask.
)
Petrie: You think my writing is eloquent? Thank you!
My thoughts are much less organized than they come off as being in my posts, and the main reason they get that way is because I’m so overbearingly perfectionistic when it comes to writing. You know how I call myself a nitpicker, well, no one is more heavily oppressed by my nitpicking than myself. I like to make sure I explain things clearly, to avoid misinterpretation, but I also want my writing to
sound good (both to me and the people who read it
). I rarely post anything unless I’ve looked it over and decided for sure that I’m satisfied with the way it’s written. In most cases there’s an immense amount of editing involved during and after the writing process. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, when I start writing, I already have an idea of what I want to say, and I only need to copy the words in my head onto the computer, with minimal editing afterwards. Then there are the times where my creative juices coagulate, and I have to wrack my brain to come up with the right words to say. (I often turn to the thesaurus when can’t come up with the appropriate word.) Even in cases where the words just come to me, I often have a number of different ideas on how to say something, and I have to choose between them. All this means that I can take a very long time deciding on how to word a particular statement; even a single sentence. And a large paragraph on a complicated topic (like my response to Alex’s question) can take well over an hour.
Like my signature implies, I am far more eloquent when I write than when I speak, because when I’m talking to someone, I have less time to come up with the right words to use, and so I often blank out in the middle of a conversation if I’m trying to explain something complicated or difficult.
