Astonishing 99-Million-Year-Old Bird Wings Found Preserved In Amber

a reply to: Bone75

If you had actually bothered to click the link I provided instead of just "only on ATS" blah blah blah, you'd have seen that the article I linked is ACTUALLY titled...

A Diverse Assemblage of Late Cretaceous Dinosaur and Bird Feathers from Canadian Amber

a reply to: gortex

Thank you very much! Interesting to say the least. Guess I was hoping they were big enough to grapple up a small elephant...or like the pteradactyls in Jurassic Park! Being encased in amber should have been a dead giveaway though.

a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

look, I am Christian, always have been and always will be, and I always respect others opinion and can talk with someone about their beliefs without an argument, and doesn't change my beliefs one bit. Also, nowhere does it say God created everything a few thousand years ago. Fact is, no living person knows for sure how long ago that God created everything that you see. Maybe the Big Bang IS how God started the production of everything that we see. Maybe he didn't. We all will know one day.

One thing comes to mind, intelligent creatures, not like history depicts them, "brainless lizards" but more as famous quetzalcoatl.
Just my two cents

a reply to: Bubba1020
Where's your sarcasm detector? In the shop?

Harte

a reply to: gortex

We've known for a few decades that many dinosaurs had feathers...

Im, sorry, lol. Thats because "dinosaurs" were birds.

See? Feathers...

originally posted by: 5StarOracle
a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

Well they used to say Archaeopteryx was the first bird... but there's a little bird wing in amber there...
Dating from the same period...
Remember evolution needs a long long time to transpire that's why we don't see it happening...
lol

Holy ignorance, batman!

haha, the ignorance in this thread. Let's make something clear for all the people who may be ignorant when it comes to biology, birds are dinosaurs.

a reply to: dr1234

I had no idea birds were dinosaurs



I cannot stop staring at the amber, it is amazing.

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: 5StarOracle
a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

Well they used to say Archaeopteryx was the first bird... but there's a little bird wing in amber there...
Dating from the same period...
Remember evolution needs a long long time to transpire that's why we don't see it happening...
lol

Holy ignorance, batman!

If there was a shortage of food, then birds could have become smaller. There was a theory that birds that could run would have an advantage over those that could only walk. Then those that could jump would have another advantage. Being able to glide a bit would be more of an advantage. Then being able to flap a bit to get a bit more lift even better. Then that would work perfectly with mountains, cliffs and vegetation.

originally posted by: veracity
a reply to: dr1234

I had no idea birds were dinosaurs

I cannot stop staring at the amber, it is amazing.

That's because, according to current scientific classification schema, they aren't.
But it's a shorthand way for people with no knowledge of the matter to chime in.

Harte

originally posted by: dr1234
haha, the ignorance in this thread. Let's make something clear for all the people who may be ignorant when it comes to biology, birds are dinosaurs.

Nope.
There are no more dinosaurs. That we know of.

a reply to: Phage

How stuff works

Crocodiles are built to last. Evolving around 200 million years in the Mesozoic epo­ch, crocodiles have far outlived the dinosaurs.

In fact, crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to snakes and lizards [source: University of California Museum of Paleontology].

So what does all of this classification have to do with whether crocodiles came from dinosaurs? Alongside birds and oth­er flying reptiles, dinosaurs are lumped into the Ornithosuchia branch.

Also an interesting creature to compare is the Leatherback Sea Turtle

It's interesting as dinos are thought to have gone extinct roughly 65 million years ago.

Not saying they are dinos, just these are interesting cases for comparative analysis. I'd also point out Turtles have beaks like birds.

From askabiologist:

The loss of teeth in favor of a beak is not an uncommon occurrence. For example, the ornithomimids and oviraptors are two types of toothless dinosaurs, but in both groups the primitive members are toothed. Why they lost their teeth is not known.

Beaks can also occur with teeth. Stegosaurs and ceratopsians both had beaks and teeth, with no evidence of any reduction in teeth.

But what about ducks with bills and duck billed platypuses? Hmmm... such a mystery it truly is, as the platypuses lay eggs like birds but are mammals.

I'm unsure about how this worked out. Anyone who could figure it out and show solid evidence to resolve it would be my hero and would deserve a Nobel...

a reply to: Phage

I used to accept the theory of macroevolution wholeheartedly, but after looking deeper into it and questioning things I am now ultimately mystified and am unsure about it.

One significant problem I'd like resolved is the so called Lazarus taxon

My curiosity wonders why such ancient creatures did not hardly evolve at all (if even at all) for hundreds of millions of years while all these others supposedly evolved rapidly in comparison by ridiculous bounds.

I'm not saying it is or isn't either way, because I honestly don't know or understand. I'd like to though.

Here's a cool find from recent years:
Dendrogamma

The lead scientist of the identification effort, Jørgen Olesen of the University of Copenhagen, suggested that they represent "an early branch on the tree of life, with similarities to the 600 million-year-old extinct Ediacara fauna."[12] At least three genera of Ediacarans—Albumares, Anfesta, and Rugoconites—share similarities with Dendrogramma; all three appear to have possessed a disc with an internal network of forking channels.[5]

It's such an enigma they even named it Dendrogramma enigmatica. Crazy stuff, we have so much to learn. I'm very excited!

a reply to: muzzleflash

I used to accept the theory of macroevolution wholeheartedly

Because you use that term it leads me to doubt your statement. There is no theory of macroevolution.

My curiosity wonders why such ancient creatures did not hardly evolve at all (if even at all) for hundreds of millions of years while all these others supposedly evolved rapidly in comparison by ridiculous bounds.

There is no requirement in the theory of evolution for any particular rate of change. It depends upon the rate of mutation and the rate of change of the environment (which includes competitors). The coelcanth didn't change much either, over a much longer period of time.

a reply to: Phage

Because you use that term it leads me to doubt your statement. There is no theory of macroevolution.

Yes there is.

Macroevolution is evolution on a scale of separated gene pools.[1] Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species, in contrast with microevolution,[2] which refers to smaller evolutionary changes (typically described as changes in allele frequencies) within a species or population.

Source

a reply to: thesungod
Thanks. So the term applies to populations of organisms (gene pools). I've most often seen it used as differentiating "speciation" from "adaptation" when in fact, it doesn't really do so:

The process of speciation may fall within the purview of either, depending on the forces thought to drive it. Paleontology, evolutionary developmental biology, comparative genomics and genomic phylostratigraphy contribute most of the evidence for the patterns and processes that can be classified as macroevolution. An example of macroevolution is the appearance of feathers during the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs, when now viewed at a distance from the future, although as they arose the developing changes would be deemed microevolution.

Maybe that's why it's not used much in science, it seems to have a fluid meaning.

Use of the term is most common in the continental European traditions (as Dobzhansky, Mayr, Rensch, Goldschmidt and Schindewolf were) and less common in the Anglo-American tradition (such as John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins). Hence, use of the term "macroevolution" is sometimes wrongly used as a litmus test of whether the writer is "properly" neo-Darwinian or not.[6]

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Phage

Maybe that's why it's not used much in science, it seems to have a fluid meaning.

I don't think it is a maybe. I think you are dead on correct.

Feathers are amazing structures. Look how the Hummingbird has been able to utilize them. Multi-purpose heat conservation and reflection... Incredible colors and patterns that hair alone is not capable of. And, of course, light but with great structural integrity... great for flying.

a reply to: Phage

What did you doubt?

That I accepted whatever they taught me in my honors biology courses without question for awhile?

Why would I be disingenuous about that? Seemed pretty innocent to me, I was a good student too. I even got an award.

It took me perhaps 15 years after taking years of biology courses before I ever even realized a lot of it was far more mysterious than I anticipated.

In those courses they present it all like it's a fact and like it's all been worked out just fine. I don't recall ever even hearing a serious doubt about it until much later. I didn't consider religious creationism to be valid in any way as it sounds so wacky just on it's face value.

Also what Carl Sagan pointed out about seeing stars at night in the sky combined with the measurable speed of light - and his bewilderment at the proposition that all the stars beyond a few thousand light years would have to be malicious illusions - caused me to sort of just assume that because the Universe appears vast and ancient, that the concepts we currently espouse about evolution must be true, otherwise, what the hell is going on?

Once I started questioning all of this and put my ingrained assumptions aside I realized we probably don't have a good explanation yet.

I don't see why the stars would be fakes: all logic leads to the astronomically high odds (pun intended) they are indeed real and incredibly far away and the speed of light is indeed what we measure it to be.

But causality isn't operating the way initially assumed (by me). The Lazarus taxon topic revealed to me the Universe could be 50 trillion years old but that doesn't make our common precepts of evolution accurate or valid. It doesn't necessarily follow, obviously.

Something strange is going on here and I'm not convinced anyone really has a grip on this yet. That's why I joked that anyone who can reasonably explain to my why a mammal has a duck bill and is laying eggs they deserved a Nobel Prize. Because the very topic appears insane in terms of our current ideology and conceptions, and I'm stumped.

There's plenty of examples, I just like the platypus since everyone recognizes it and will immediately see the point I'm making.

Even you must be a little tickled by the idea of it...