The Study of Prehistoric Birds Depends on Imprints of a Prehistoric

question 20

Essay

The study of prehistoric birds depends on imprints of a prehistoric creature’s remains in stone, commonly known as fossils. To study ancient ecosystems effectively it would be useful know the actual mass of individual birds, but this information is not preserved in the fossil record. It seems reasonable that the biomechanics of birds is much the same today as in the past. For example, today’s relationship between the wing length and total weight of a bird should be very similar to that for birds from the distant past. The wing lengths of ancient birds are readily obtainable from the fossil record, but the weight is
not. A regression model expressing the relationship between wing length and total weight of modern birds could be used to estimate the mass of similar prehistoric birds. Data for some species of modern birds of prey and are given below.



-Investigators would like to model the relationship between Wing Length and Weight.The least squares line for predicting total weight using wing length as a predictor is ofinterest.
a) What is the equation of the least-squares line?
b) Graph the least-squares line on the scatter plot

c) Approximately what proportion of thevariability in weight is explained by thewing length?

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