November newsletter

[GregH]

A very good article on feathers by R. Petersen. I appreciate the effort that Di has put into finding such interesting articles and giving them to us.

I have one thing that I'd like to add to the statement

Feathers are one of the most prominent features of a bird's anatomy, and they are unique to birds. Every bird has feathers and everything that has feathers is a bird.

If feather arose in birds there'd be some featherless birds at the base of their evolutionary tree but there aren't, so feathers arouse in the ancestors of birds; Theropod reptiles. This is a group of bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs that includes the Tyrannosaurs and Deinonychus. If anyones is interested in a reading more about the origin of feathers there are some good article in New Scientist - The untold story of feathers, Coloured feathers readied first birds for take off, Dinosaur reveals fully formed feathers, Living dinosaurs: How did feathers and flight evolve?

[Diane]

Thanks for the nice comments Greg but mainly I rely on people on the forum either writing the articles or knowing where they are and allowing permission from their relevant clubs.