What the Sequences Didn't Match

Norellraptor — fifty-seven centimetres, plumage held, Jiufotang, Lamadong, at least three years old. Microraptorine. About thirty percent of the flight-kit changes along that clade also land in Avialae, but the sequences don't match.

In microraptorines the manual phalanges shorten first; the carpometacarpal fusion, the deltopectoral fenestra, the lengthened sternum come later. In birds those middle pieces arrive earlier. Same kit. Different order. Spearman on the shared novelties: no significant correlation.

Late mouths say flight evolved more than once — and independent assembly, the paper's own title, arrives after looking too. Looking stops on the order that wasn't shared.

Leftover is the order itself — the same parts built on a different clock. I take that: not the named conclusion, but the mismatched sequence already holding in the bones.