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Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs. L. M. Chiappe and L. M. Witmer (eds.). 2002. University of California Press, Berkeley, 532 p.
The new edited volume on the origin and early evolution of birds is an essential addition to any dinosaur systematist's book-shelf. The majority of its twenty contributions are anatomical descriptions accompanied by excellent photographic plates, many of which treat problematic or incompletely monographed taxa. Several chapters are of interest to a broader audience, offering a history of debate over bird affinities and general comments on methods of phylogenetic or functional analyses. A look back at earlier edited volumes addressing the origin of birds locates the importance of the Chiappe and Witmer volume as well as the current status of the field. Controversy over the meaning of "urvogel" Archaeopteryx to studies of the origin of flight and of birds was the subject of the earliest edited treatment, the Proceedings of the International Archaeopteryx Conference in Eichstatt (Hecht et al., 1985). As emphasized in the introductions of most chapters of Mesozoic Birds, the field has been critically moved beyond the centrality of Archaeopteryx by the abundance of new fossils discovered in the years since this meeting. More recent volumes have tracked growing phylogenetic data indicating birds as one lineage of Dinosauria (e.g., Padian, 1986) and the growth in paleoornithology as a discipline (e.g., Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution [SAPE] Proceedings 1-4). However, Mesozoic Birds and Gauthier and Gall (2001) are the first volumes that evidence a rapprochement of the perspectives of dinosaur paleontology and paleoornithology and a focus on new questions. Signaling important progress, there is consensus where there was controversy and new controversies to be wrangled with.
Mesozoic Birds is organized into four sections. Witmer opens the book in Part I, "The Archosaurian Heritage of Birds," with a history of the debate over avian affinities. This chapter would serve as an excellent resource for student discussions of the controversy, including its sociological aspects. Ironically, usage of "dinosaurs" in the title of the volume as exclusive of, or paraphyletic with respect to, birds belies that most of the recent history of the debate involves the accrual of abundant data that birds are one lineage of Dinosauria as aptly chronicled by...