Dinosaurs That Do Not Fly Poem by gershon hepner

It seems that archaeopteryx
flew not like archetypal birds,
which made it wrong of us to mix
up birds with dinosauran herds.
Although it surely had a lot
of feathers, these kept
it warm where it was cold, not hot,
at fossilflying quite inept.

It’s so hard to identify
transitions, which like new ideas,
are fascinating but don’t fly,
like dinosaurs of yesteryears,
because until they have established
themselves they’ve no identity,
and must wait till they have been published
before they are an entity.

Ideas may be as hard to buy
as it for archaeopteryx
was in Jurassic time to fly
outside the sterile, studied Styx,
although with little inhibition
my own attempt like dinosaurs
to leave their boxes in transition,
and fossilfly to unsure shores.

Inspired by an article by John Noble Wilford on archaeopteryx, which scientists now think may never have flown (“Paper Challenges Ideas About ‘Early Bird’ Dinosaur, ” NYT, October 9,2009:
The “early bird” archaeopteryx may not be a bird, after all. The first fossil of the raven-size species was an immediate sensation when it was excavated in 1860, in southern Germany. It had feathers and a wishbone, like birds, but teeth and a long, bony tail, like reptiles. Coming the year after publication of “The Origin of Species, ” the discovery swayed many scientists into accepting Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s staunch ally, recognized the fossil in a limestone slab as a transitional species between dinosaurs and birds. Over time, the 10 known specimens of archaeopteryx became widely regarded as examples of the earliest bird, which lived about 150 million years ago.Now scientists examining tiny pieces of a specimen’s long bone under powerful microscopes for the first time said they found unexpected patterns indicating that the species grew at a rate faster than living reptiles but only one-third as fast as that of modern birds. The evidence, they reported Thursday, challenges the hypothesis that archaeopteryx had already developed characteristics of a physiologically modern bird.In a research paper being published in the online journal PLoS One, the science team led by Gregory M. Erickson, a paleontologist at Florida State University, concluded that archaeopteryx was simply a feathered dinosaur that might have been capable of some aerial behavior, though perhaps not powered flight. In short, despite feathers, it was not the archetypal bird.Dr. Erickson said in an interview that studied under a polarizing microscope, the dense microstructure of the bone showed few traces of blood vessels. He said this was evidence of a slow metabolism by which the individual probably took more than two years to reach adult size. Birds have especially fast metabolisms, making them able to leave the nest in days or a few weeks. Mark A. Norell, a co-author who specializes in dinosaur research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the findings showed that “the transition to physiological and metabolic birds happened well after archaeopteryx.” As a result, he added, the evolutionary emergence of birds “is still a huge mystery.”


10/9/09