Birdfolk,

This is a brief summary of the lecture given at the U. of Washington by
Kevin Padian entitled "Did birds evolve from dinosaurs?"

Kevin Padian gave a very entertaining lecture on the evolution of birds.
He argued very strongly that birds did evolve from dinosaurs. In fact, he
said that, despite what one hears in the popular press, there is really no
controversy on this matter. The major point method of analysis was to
use cladistics, the construction of branching trees, to determine the
relatedness of individual species traits. He was able to prepare
cladistic trees for about 200 traits! that were consistent with birds
evolving from dinosaurs. Of course, he didn't show ALL of the data (nor
are all the data in).

He also argued that many of the adaptations that were necessary to make
a bird a bird were already present somewhere among the many dinosaur
species. This includes traits such as hollow bones, a wishbone, bone
adaptations necessary for the flight stroke, loss and elongation of
digits, and even feathers. In the case of feathers, they were clearly not
feathers that were adapted for flight, but rather for either insulation,
or display (which Padian said was a catchall term used when no obvious
function comes to mind). In a few cases, these "pre-adaptations" were
present in more than one line of dinosaurs, including those not thought
to be in the direct ancestral line of birds.

Among the topics that Padian covered was the "sociology of science". He
claimed that the newspapers and popular press present this as a
controversial issue by continuing to solicit the views of the opposition,
a limited number of naysayers who are always called upon to counter any
birds-from-dinosaur argument or new data. He went on to list the
arguments made by the opposition and to demonstrate their fallacy, ad
hoc nature or lack of validity. The naysayers apparently are not
scientists in the field and don't come to scientific meetings where the
pertinent evidence is reviewed. He did not, I should state, dismiss any
of their arguments out of hand, nor could he conclusively debunk some of
what they claim (some of which may ultimately be unknowable), but
steadfastly insisted that the weight of the evidence still favors the
birds from dinosaurs theory.

Sorry not to have presented all of the evidence! Any other comments from
others, including those Tweeters in attendance, would be welcome.

Tom Cotner
Seattle