Page 104 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

THE TRANSITIONAL-FORM DILEMMA

tures remarkably similar, if not identical, to dino-fuzz (Wellnhofer 1991). Yet,
the finest-grained lithographic limestone, the Archaeopteryx- bearing
Solnhofen beds, do not preserve dino-fuzz on the small coelurosaur
Compsognathus, a very close ally of the early Cretaceous Chinese
Sinosauropteryx, which exhibits a halo of that material. 62
Following that analysis, Feduccia avers that some paleontologists
are behaving in a prejudiced manner in this view:
. . . shared by many paleontologists: birds are dinosaurs; therefore, any fila-
mentous material preserved in dromaeosaurs must represent protofeathers. 63
According to Feduccia, one of the facts invalidating this precon-
ception is traces of dino-fuzz that can have no possible connection with
bird feathers:
Most important, “dino-fuzz” is now being discovered in a number of taxa,
some unpublished, but particularly in a Chinese pterosaur (Wang et al.
2002) and a therizinosaur, which has teeth like those of
prosauropods. Most surprisingly, skin fibers very closely re-
sembling dino-fuzz have been discovered in a Jurassic
ichthyosaur and described in detail (Lingham-Soliar
1999, 2001). Some of those branched fibers are
exceptionally close in morphology to the so-
called branched protofeathers (“Prum
Protofeathers”) described by Xu et
al.” 64
Feduccia recalls that in
the past, certain structures
were found next to fos-
sils and were originally
thought to belong to

A drawing of
Therizinosaurus

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