bluetone: I tried to duplicate the top bone. No go. The DUPLICATE command is still greyed out. I did build a whole new bird, boned and animated it, and dragged it into the browser. When I dragged it out into the scene, all the animation keyframes came with it, but the skeleton detached from the mesh. Upon re-attaching, the influences were all off and the bird was a distorted mess. I tried repeatedly to re-assert the influences and finally gave up around 3:00 in the morning. I kept the model/mesh in the scene and will attempt to re-bone it today. Thanks for trying.