Another "missing link" fossil found to be fake

Another "Missing Link" Fossil Found to be a Fake
Zhou Xin
[PureInsight.org] On November 21, 2002, the journal Nature published an article named "Archaeoraptor's Better Half: The Other Component of the Infamous Fossil Forgery is Identified as a Fish-Eating Bird." (VOl 420, 2002) After careful measurements and morphological study, scientists concluded that the Archaeoraptor fossil that was once proclaimed as a key intermediate between carnivorous dinosaurs and birds is now known to be a forgery. It is a chimera formed of bird and dromaeosaur parts.

Ancient bird scientists Zhonghe Zhou and Fucheng Zhang, from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Science, and Julia A. Clarke from the New York based Museum of Natural History investigated the piece of fossil and confirmed that the Archaeoraptor fossil is a fake. It is composed of the tail of a dromaeosaur and a nearly intact Yanornis martini skeleton. It was previously claimed that this fossil had been smuggled from inland China to America. In 1999, National Geographic reported on it in detail and called it a new species between dinosaurs and birds.

Using X-ray technology, the Archaeoraptor fossil was found to consist of two to five specimens from two or more species. Parts other than the dromaeosaur tail are strikingly similar to Yanornis martini in terms of morphology, body ratio, and anatomy, and completely different from those of a dromaeosaur. In the stomach of a recently discovered Yanornis specimen, scientists found fish remains, which indicates that Yanornis fed on fish.

Over the past one hundred years, Darwin's Theory of Evolution has dominated. Many phenomena cannot be explained according to the theory, but scientists still try to defend it. People try to find the missing links in order to validate the theory of evolution, but so far, no conclusive intermediate species fossils had been found. The "Archaeoraptor" fossil is just another case of this.
external image

Figure: Analysis of the Archaeoraptor forgery and Yanrnis martini specimen.
a: the avian half of the Archaeoraptor fossil
b: Yanrnis martini holotype specimen
c: Insert: recently found Yanrnis martini and the fish remains in it.

The ridiculous reptile to bird theory

And then there is common sense. In a popular evolutionary explanation, here's how reptiles evolved into birds: They wanted to eat flying insects that were out of reach. So the reptiles began leaping, and flapping their arms to get higher. Over millions of years, their limbs transformed into wings by increments, their tough reptilian scales gradually sprouting soft feathers.

But the theory suffers when scrutinized. According to natural selection, a physical trait is acquired because it enhances survival.

The problem is, wings would have no genuine survival value until they reached the point of flight. Birds' wings and feathers are perfectly designed instruments. Those with crippled or clipped wings cannot fly, and are bad candidates for survival. Likewise, the intermediate creature whose limb was half leg, half wing, would fare poorly -- it couldn't fly, nor walk well. Natural selection would eliminate it without a second thought.

Let's raise an even more fundamental question: Why aren't reptiles today developing feathers? Why aren't fish today growing little legs, trying to adapt to land? Shouldn't evolution be ongoing?

The complete lack of a fossil record

Supposedly invertebrates evolved into the first fish. But despite millions of fossils from both groups, transitional fossils linking them are missing.

Insects, rodents, bats, pterodactyls and numerous other life forms appear in the fossil record with no trace of fossils showing how they developed.

The main point: If evolutionary theory is true, we should find the innumerable transitional forms Darwin predicted would be in the geologic record. We shouldn't find just a handful, but billions of them. Instead, the fossil record shows animals complete -- not in developmental stages -- the very first time they are seen. And this is just what we would expect if the Bible is right and God created animals whole.

James Perloff is the author of Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism

Many of the alleged ‘intermediates’ actually are fully formed, modern feathers, or structures that are not feathers at all.65 For example, Sinosauropteryx ‘feathers’ are actually ‘filaments’.70–71

Other ancient fossil feather discoveries—such as on the oviraptorosaur Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx—are ‘true feathers’.72 Touted by some as a dinosaur, Caudipteryx has been dated to within the early Cretaceous, often estimated as 30 million years younger than Archaeopteryx.73 Evolutionary paleo-ornithologists Feduccia and Martin, staunch critics of the dinosaur-to-bird theory, believe that Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx are more likely to be flightless birds similar to ostriches.

They have birdlike teeth and lack the long tail seen in theropods. Caudipteryx even used gizzard stones like modern plant-eating birds, but unlike theropods. Far from being ancestors of Archaeopteryx, cladistic evidence points (under evolutionary presuppositions) to their being birdlike (under their own transforming paradigm), and secondarily flightless descendants of Archaeopteryx

The leading paleo-ornithologist and evolutionary critic of the dino-to-bird dogma, Dr Alan Feduccia, who is an evolutionist himself, sounded a note of caution about the ‘feathered dinosaurs’ in general in an interview with the evolutionary Discover magazine (below, emphasis added).3 It certainly seems strange that all these ‘feathered dinosaurs’ come from a single province of China—the same place as the Archaeoraptor hoax came from. Indeed, the holotype (first named specimen) of Microraptor was in fact part of this hoax!4 However, neither our case nor Feduccia’s against previous ‘feathered dinosaurs’ has ever depended on this particular problem, and the same is true of Microraptor gui, as will be shown.

Discover: What about all the other evidence for feathered dinosaurs?
Feduccia: When we see actual feathers preserved on specimens, we need to carefully determine if we are looking at secondarily flightless birds that have retained feathers and only superficially resemble dinosaurs, or if the specimens are in fact related to dinosaurs. That’s a difficult issue to deal with right now, given the existence of fake fossils.

Discover: So far, only one feathered dinosaur, Archaeoraptor, has been publicly acknowledged as a forgery. You think there are others?

Feduccia: Archaeoraptor is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. When you go to these fossil shows, it’s difficult to tell which ones are faked and which ones are not. I have heard that there is a fake-fossil factory in northeastern China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found.

Journals like Nature don’t require specimens to be authenticated, and the specimens immediately end up back in China, so nobody can examine them. They may be miraculous discoveries, they may be missing links as they are claimed, but there is no way to authenticate any of this stuff.

Discover: Why would anyone fake a fossil?
Feduccia: Money. The Chinese fossil trade has become a big business. These fossil forgeries have been sold on the black market for years now, for huge sums of money. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit.

It is not unreasonable to apply Feduccia’s scepticism to the current find. Even the original paper should make us cautious. Commenting on the paper point-by-point:

Notes on the specimens. Of the six specimens in the present study, IVPP V13476 was collected by the Liaoxi expedition team of the IVPP in 2001, IVPP V13352, V13320, V13477 and V13351 were purchased by the IVPP during the field seasons of 2001 and 2002, and TNP00996 was purchased by Tianjin Museum of Natural History in 2002.

It is highly suspicious to rely on purchased fossils, since one has no proof of the geological context or whether they have been doctored. As Dr Feduccia says, no-one from Nature would have checked the authenticity of the specimen. Dr Storrs Olson, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has also noted that Nature’s reliability on this issue is highly suspect:

Careful study of bird, alligator and turtle embryos at early stages offer convincing evidence that the "fingers" of bird wings correspond to the index, middle and ring fingers of humans
www.sciencedaily.com...

Drs. Alan Feduccia and Julie Nowicki of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have opened a series of live ostrich eggs at various stages of development and found what they believe is proof ... >
www.sciencedaily.com...

No good evidence exists that fossilized structures found in China and which some paleontologists claim are the earliest known rudimentary feathers were really feathers at all, a renowned ... > www.sciencedaily.com...

CORVALLIS, Ore. (June 22, 2000) - Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest animal ever known to have feathers, which may have been the ancestor of birds but clearly was not a dinosaur - a discovery that calls into serious question many theories about an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

I think should be the real take-home lesson of the Peppered Moth saga? The fact that this amazingly banal set of events has been hammered worldwide as ‘ultimate proof’ for a belief that microbes originally turned into moths (and moth researchers)! This is far more stupefying to contemplate than even all the faked photos and talk of fraudulent experiments.
store.creationontheweb.com...

BOSTON -- Geologists at Ohio State University have found the largest-ever complete fossil of a cockroach, one that lived 55 million years before the first dinosaurs.
www.sciencedaily.com...