I love anatomy. With a little bit of background knowledge it becomes easy to see the similarities and disparities between any two organisms you wish to compare, and it is always exciting to see how the bones of my arms correspond to the flippers of a whale, the forelegs of a horse, the wings of a bird, and so on.
In order to highlight the resemblances between our skeleton and other vertebrates, though, illustrators have sometimes created some rather odd diagrams. While searching for grist for my writing mill I happened upon this one in the Boys' Airplane Book which purports to show the "curious resemblance" between the skeleton of a bird and a human:
Perhaps the figure on the right could be a template for another rendition of the Dinosauroid.
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I think the one on the right was my 8th grade gym teacher.
Oh boy -- I sure hope the Children's Television Workshop doesn't retroactively sue them for infringement.
Yours,
CBB
Maybe it's just me, but "Man-bird" sounds like some sort of weird 70s television action show.
"Man-bird -- part man, part bird -- all ass-kicking."
gg; Sort of like a Manimal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manimal) meets Mannix sort of thing?
And that is more-or-less exactly what I thought of when I picked the title for the post. I don't know why, but the Marvel character "Man-Thing" sprung to mind, and so I ran with it.
Or a weird 80s Disney action film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082199/
Here's a clearer version (so the weirdness can be better appreciated):
http://sites.google.com/site/zoologicalbeginnings/_/rsrc/1227565491277/…
"Sort of like a Manimal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manimal) meets Mannix sort of thing?"
Yes, I clearly envision the main character as a tough, hard-beaked cop who makes such pithy statements as,
"Our suspect has flown the coop."
"Your alibi just laid an egg."
Michael; Thanks. Two observations. 1) The connection of the chains to the skulls is a little freaky. Maybe they were designs for a human + man-bird sets of keychains. :) 2) Does that human skeleton have claws?!
gg; Oh no, now you've done it. I am going to spend the rest of the day trying to think of bad one-liners.
"I'm just doing this to earn my wings."
Brian wrote: "I am going to spend the rest of the day trying to think of bad one-liners. "
That's what I've been doing to!
"I can't believe they're going to let chicks serve on the police force!" (Our hypothetical show is set in the sexist 70's...)
Note the picture incorrectly homologizes our clavicles with a bird's coracoids, and reverses the ulna and radius identifications. But I guess for 1555 it's not bad.
Unfortunately, to get this perspective on a bird skeleton, one must orient the bones artificually. The avian arm would, if extended in the same fashion the human arm is, extend below the substrate. If you were to posture the avian skeleton in precisely the exact orientation as the human, and ignore the dislocation involved, one would get an image as graphic as comparing a squirrel to a gorilla.