Feathered Beast

I love this theory: birds are descendants of dinosaurs.

Isn't that the coolest thing you ever heard?

And they have proof, too. Dinosaur fossil remains with feathers. It's like a missing link in the bird world. The transvestite of animals.

But the conundrum that always gets caught in my brain is this: if the dinosaurs vanished from the planet due to some planetary catastrophe, then how could the birds descend from them?

Wooo...brain teaser!

Well, paleontologists do answer that question. I once asked Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York that very question. And the answer was: obviously not all of them became extinct. Norell's fossil discoveries keep mounting the evidence for dinosaur-as-bird theories.

I'm all for it. Anything to give birds more june nest cest quoi is okay in my book. Adds to their mystique as we watch them float on airwaves. Now who else can do that?

These photos of flying birds are by photog/artist Rosalie Winard. She calls them Avian Primitives. And they do evoke that early planetary atmosphere of wildlife free from human meddling. (Okay, we're not just meddlers, but we do meddle.)

The other photo is the missing link Archaeopteryx. It's the fossil thing with feathers. Ahhh....feathers. Don't you wish you had some? I do. A kind of soft coat of arms. Something to flutter. Something to fly on. 

Ever see birds clean their feathers? They slide their beak down the feather shaft from close to their bodies to the tip of the feather. Especially after a splash in a puddle. Or a dirt bath. 

Ingenious: dirt baths. An oxymoron with a whole lot of sense.