question for the bio-literate crowd:
why's it a reasonable assumption that the feathers of those dino pre-bird things would have been as weak as those of modern birds?
I mean, I'm thinking about astronauts in space losing bone density, muscle mass decreasing when you stop straining the muscle--strengths that are costly to maintain being lost when no longer needed. If the matter of fact here isn't simply 'you can't fit enough naturally produced structures (like feather shafts) of that size onto an object that size for them to together possibly be strong enough to still lift that much weight' (similar to the 'lead balloon' problem), why isn't it reasonable to assume modern feathers are an adaption to a lower-cost structure than existed in a time where pressures demanded a stronger feather?
