"Protoavis"

PROTOAVIS

Protoavis (meaning "first bird") is a problematic taxon of archosaurian known from fragmentary remains from Late Triassic Norian stage deposits near Post, Texas. Much controversy remains over the animal, and therer are many different interpretations of what Protoavis actually is. When it was first described, the fossils were described as bein from a promitive bird wiich, if the identification is valid, would push back avian origins some 60-75 million years. The original describer of Protoavis texensis, Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University, interpreted teh type specimen to have come from a single animal, specifically a 35 cm tall bird that lived in what is now Texas, USA, around 210 miliion years ago. Thought it existed far earlier than Archaeopteryx, its skeletal structure is allegedly more bird-like. Protoavis has been reconstructed as a carnivorous bird that had teeth on the tip of its jaws and eyes located at the front of the skull, suggesting a nocturnal or crepuscular lifestyle. Reconstructions usually depict it with feathers found in some modern birds and non-avian dinosaurs. However, re-evaluation of the fossil material by subsequent authors such as Lawrence Witmer have been inclonclusive regarding wheteher or not these structures are actual quill knobs.
However, this descripiton of Protoavis assumes that Protoavis has been correctly interpreted as a bird. Almost all paleontologists doubt that Protoavis is a bird, or taht all remains assigned to it even come from a single species, because of the circumstances of its discovery and unconvincing avian synapomorphies in its fragmentary material.

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