Alan Feduccia Quotes

United States, Paleoanthropologist
April 25, 1943

John Alan Feduccia is a paleornithologist, specializing in the origins and phylogeny of birds. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. Feduccia's principal authored works include two books, The Age of Birds and The Origin and Evolution of Birds, and numerous papers in various ornithological and biological journals.

Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that.

Alan Feduccia
Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird.

Alan Feduccia
- Sense
- Bird
- Archaeopteryx

The fiber-collagen meshwork looked virtually identical to these so-called 'proto-feathers' found in the Chinese dinosaurs.

Alan Feduccia
- Found
- Feathers
- Dinosaurs
Instead of regarding birds as deriving from dinosaurs, Scansoriopteryx reinstates the validity of regarding them as a separate class uniquely avian and non-dinosaurian.

Alan Feduccia
- Birds
- Dinosaurs
- Validity
On the contrary, there is a considerable body of evidence that these fossil traces, known as 'dino-fuzz', have nothing to do with bird feathers... I, and many others, do not find any credible evidence that those structures represent protofeathers.

Alan Feduccia
- Evidence
- Dinosaur
- Traces
The question is, which three? In dinosaurs we know it's the thumb and the next two fingers.

Alan Feduccia
There's been way too much hyperbole. To get back to any good science you've got to get away from that and get back to the bench, ... I think the field is ripe for some young scientist who doesn't have any cemented views to come in and look at this and paint it with a brand-new brush.

Alan Feduccia
- Science
- Views
- Get Back
The age dates for these things are still unresolved, ... We need to back up and take a closer look at these things before drawing any final conclusions.

Alan Feduccia