After all is said and done and all the charts and relationships are analyzed here is what the dino to bird theory comes down to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumaniraptora
"The name Paraves was coined by Paul Sereno in 1997.[1] The clade was defined by Sereno in 1998 as a branch-based clade containing all Maniraptora closer to Neornithes (which includes all the birds living in the world today) than to Oviraptor.[2]
The ancestral paravian is a hypothetical animal; the first common ancestor of birds, dromaeosaurids, and troodontids which was not also ancestral to oviraptorosaurs. Little can be said with certainty about this animal. The work of Turner et al. (2007) suggested that the ancestral paravian could not glide or fly, and that it was most likely small (around 65 centimeters long and 600–700 grams in mass).[3] But the work of Xu et al. (2003), (2005) and Hu et al (2009) provide examples of basal and early paravians with four wings, including members of the Avialae (Pedopenna), Dromaeosauridae (Microraptor), and Troodontidae (Anchiornis).[4][5][6]"
All so called "missing links" are hypothetical, for it would be asinine for anybody to claim finding an actual ancestor. A lot of animals in the human cladogram are hypothetical. That is how cladistics works, speculation based on the finds that we actually have as to what we don't have.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at the most recent posts I have posted. Things do not need to be so speculative.
ReplyDeleteThe "ancestral paravians" are actually primitive birds such as the enantiornithes.
These primitive birds of the Late Jurassic and the Early Cretaceous were the ancestors of the Ornithomimosauria and the Oviraptorosauria as well.