albaradru

I am in trouble with my paper, I kind of don't know where to go from
here. Can anybody point me in the right direction? This is an eMail I

Mr. Irwin,

I have been trudging along on this thing, it has come along pretty
well, alot of good arguments and analysis of counterarguments. I have
however come to a point where honestly my knowledge of the subject is
exhausted: Basically it is an issue of classification at this point.
The recent findings in China are my main points of evidence for the
Theropodan ancestry of modern aves. The only thing is that I am not
sure what the heck the things are at this point. I know one of the
specimens, Microraptor I believe, is a Dromaeosaur. But the others I
am not sure about. I guess I just assumed that they were all
Dromaeosaurs and built alot of my arguments around that assumption.
However as it turns out the dang things might be something completely
different, therefore really messing things up. This is turning into
more of a this this this this this this and this guy, all maniraptors
but of different families can be the most recent ancestors of modern
aves. Tah dah. You pick which one looks cooler and that's the one
that was the alpha #1 branch off to aves. There is obviously a huge
amount of convergent evolution involved, and the time-frames involved
are just baffling. It is as if flight, or at least feathers,
appeared, then dissapeared for MILLIONS of years, and then re-appeared
again, then GOT LOST AGAIN, and then re-appeared in these small
maniraptors. IS it possible that these little raptors, all of
different families, can ALL be the first ancestors of modern aves?
Wouldnt that mean that there would be a ton of different genera of
birds, most of which could only be related to eachother because of the
shared character of feathers? And then there is the issue of the
ratites, what the HECK were those? Were they closer related to
Therizinosaurs as opposed to the little arboreal birds, do they
represent the medium between large down-insulated theropods and small
arboreal feather-flappers? How can they, with the temporal issue still
causing problems. It is a MESS. Therizinosaurs occured mostly in the
late Triassic and early mid Jurassic, and as far as I know they have
only been found with small tube-projections, and not really anything
significant enough to even call insulation. Arboreal
micro-maniraptors lived in the same time frame as well. And then
Deinonychus, basically proving that dromaeosaurids are secondarily
flightless...How can something as complex as a feather EVOLVE INTO
BEING MORE THAN ONCE? Especially among not so related things over
HUGE expanses of time, and also among EXTREMELY related things in the
same FAMILY over a very short period of time? Has that ever been seen
before, where something like an EYE was lost and then re-evolved and
then lost, in DIFFERENT genera of related animals???? Sorry this is
turning into a really long eMail. I guess I havnt kept on top of the
research like I should have, and now I am scrambling for answers that
I cannot find in discertations or books. Too bad Ostrom had to croak,
I would very much like to talk to him about this. I think it is
going to take more time to figure this stuff out, and to get a better
understanding of both the classification systems and the time-frames
involved. Much more time. It has come to the point where I feel that
I am coming to the point where the professional research being done is
kinda not that far ahead of me, and that even they do not have the
answers to some of these questions, or perhaps I just don't know where
to look?
I am cutting an entire section that has flawed
classification data and is completely biased in the direction of the
Dromaeosaurid hypothesis of flight synthesis, which I am now thinking
of scrapping completely and stepping back to a general maniraptoran
synthesis of flight. I am also just scrapping some tables and
cladograms that make no sense to me at this point. Basically it is not
worth much scientifically but an interesting read at this point. Haha.

Thanks alot

And there is the eMail. I was actually asking my teacher for a one
month extension on the due date, we have had a year and a half to work
on this paper but I have not been as on top of it as I should have.
Tee-hee. I am a dumb busy kid, what can I say.

Any help at all would be great.

Thanks