Until recently, many paleontologists thought that Archaeopteryx itself gave rise to opposite birds [birds whose foot bones are fused from the top down, as opposed to modern birds, whose foot bones are fused from the bottom up—BH/BT] which in turn gradually evolved into modern birds.... [Alan] Feduccia and his colleagues now challenge that view with fossils of a bird the size of a sparrow, called Liaoningornis. The specimen, unearthed by a farmer in the Yixian formation in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province, lacks a skull but includes a nearly complete skeleton with foot bones and a keeled sternum that resemble those of modern birds. Yet the Chinese scientists cite radiometric dates of 137 to 142 million years for the volcanic rock of the Yixian formation, which would make the bird almost as old as Archaeopteryx. And the same beds also yielded a magpie-sized primitive bird called Confuciusornis, which shares many traits with both Archaeopteryx and modern birds.... According to Feduccia and Martin, the discoveries imply that by the time of Archaeopteryx, birds had already diverged into two lineages and had a rich history that is missing from the fossil record. One lineage led to modern birds. Another led to Archaeopteryx and the opposite birds, which they view as sister taxa, closely related to each other but distinct from the line that led to modern birds. And both of these bird lineages must have descended from a much earlier ancestral bird. Feduccia reckons that the first bird must have lived about 76 million years before the birdlike dinosaurs of the Cretaceous—a fact that he says raises questions about the dinosaurian origins of birds (emp. added).
Gibbons, Ann (1998), “Dinosaur Fossils, in Fine Feather, Show Links to Birds,” Science, 280:2051, June 26.

Originally posted by papabryant

Dr Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, says:

“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”

Feduccia, A.; in: V. Morell, Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms, Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993.

but believes they share a common ancestor with dinosauria

which goes against your previous claim evolutions is a lie and one thing cant become another, but then you use evidence of a guy saying they came from a reptile ancestor of dinosaurs not dinosaurs directly

so for you to accept him as right you also have to agree with evolution ... and i know you wont like that Longisquama insignis is his common ancestor of choice you are reading these papers before you just stick them up arnt you?

Christiansen, P. and Bonde, N., Axial and appendicular pneumaticity in Archaeopteryx, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 267:2501–2505, 2000.

read it i even linked it in my last but 1 reply i believe as the first paper i linked

Extant non-avian reptiles have substantially less capacity for oxygen

dinosaurs

despite recent
claims of unpneumatized non-axial bones in Archaeopteryx
(Britt 1997). It is possible that its air-sac system was developed
almost to the level of modern birds, particularly as
the thoracal air sacs would probably not be detectable in
a fossil.
This is further corroborated by the fact that advanced
theropod dinosaurs, such as dromaeosaurs, the group
most frequently considered the sister group of birds
(Chiappe 1995; Padian & Chiappe 1998), and tyrannosaurs,
have vertebral pneumatic foramina on all presacral
vertebrae. Oviraptorosaurs have pneumatization of the
synsacral and proximal caudal vertebrae (Britt et al.
1998), indicating the possible presence of abdominal air
sacs. Thus, osteological signs of abdominal air sacs could
well be expected in Archaeopteryx as well. Postcranial
pneumaticity among theropod dinosaurs, however, is at
present not su¤ciently well understood to allow suggestions
of a likely time of origin for the various air sacs.

so they say it is still decended from dinosaurs and doesnt help your case any

Alonso, P.D., Milner, A.C., Ketcham, R.A., Cokson, M.J and Rowe, T.B., The avian nature of the brain and inner ear of Archaeopteryx, Nature 430(7000):666–669, 5 August 2004; .

and ive read this one

Archaeopteryx, the earliest known flying bird (avialan) from the Late Jurassic period, exhibits many shared primitive characters with more basal coelurosaurian dinosaurs (the clade including all theropods more bird-like than Allosaurus), such as teeth, a long bony tail and pinnate feathers.

so still showing reptillian characteristics ... not helping your case any are you

Witmer, L.M, Inside the oldest bird brain, perspective, same issue, pp. 619–620

The following points are made by Lawrence M. Witmer (Nature 2004 430:619):

1) Combining the feathered wings and wishbone of birds with the toothed jaws and long bony tail of reptiles, Archaeopteryx is the near-perfect transitional form. Since its discovery shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's _Origin of Species_ in 1859, it has been a compelling example in the case for evolution

*snip**
But a landmark study by Dominguez Alonso et al[4] goes back to the first skeleton ever found to present data on the brain and sense organs. The results have implications for both the biology of Archaeopteryx and the evolutionary transition to birds.

Witmer, L.M., Chatterjee, S., Franzosa, J. and Rowe, T., Nature 425(6961):950–953, 30 October 2003.

So here are three more peer reviewed articles that dismiss you guys as charlatans that you can try to twist around to support your asinine position.

Are you sure you guys aren't political operatives?

But your attempts at salvaging your refuted position simply places you in good company;

on September 11-15, 1984, an International Archaeopteryx Conference was held in Eichstatt, Bavaria to evaluate the official status of Archaeopteryx. In describing the consensus of the evolutionary scientists who attended the conference, Peter Dodson wrote in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology:

"At the end of the three days of presentations, [Alan] Charig [chief curator of fossil amphibians, reptiles, and birds at the British Museum—BH/BT] orchestrated a concerted effort to summarize the ideas for which consensus exists. The general credo runs as follows: Archaeopteryx was a bird that could fly, but it was not necessarily the direct ancestor of modern birds.... A communiqué expressing the unanimous belief of all participants in the evolutionary origin and significance of Archaeopteryx was adopted, in order to forestall possible misuse by creationists of apparent discord among scientists." --- Dodson, Peter (1985), “International Archaeopteryx Conference,” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 5:179, June.

To say nothing of the fact two evolutionary scientists at Texas Tech have found two examples of a crow-like bird that predate Archie by about 75 million years.

The cervical vertebrae, which have been proposed
to be unambiguously avian (Chatterjee 1991), are
remarkably similar to the cervical vertebrae of the drepanosaurid
Megalancosaurus (Renesto 2000) and isolated
three-dimensionally preserved drepanosaurid cervical vertebrae
from the Late Triassic fissure fills at Cromhall Quarry,
England (Renesto & Fraser 2003).Moreover, other drepanosaurid
bones are known from the Protoavis locality. Therefore,
it is quite possible that parts of Protoavis, particularly
the cervical vertebrae, belong to a drepanosaurid.
Witmer (2001) suggested that the braincase of the holotype
of Protoavis is not avian, but may be coelurosaurian,
noting that the braincase of Protoavis shares the following
characters with coelurosaurs: cranial pneumatic recesses,
specifically the caudal tympanic recess; a large cerebellar auricular
fossa; a metotic strut; and a vagal canal opening onto
the occiput (Chatterjee 1991;Witmer 1997, 2001). The presence
of a coelurosaur in the Bull Canyon Formation would
pull the hypothetical first appearances of theropod groups
such as the spinosauroids and carnosaurs into the Late Triassic

and the femur (TTUP
9200) of the holotype belong to a theropod. The femur exhibits
the following dinosaur and theropod characters: offset
femoral head, ligament sulcus, strongly developed facies articularis
antitrochanterica of the femur (from Langer 2004),
anterior trochanter with strong trochanteric shelf and a small
posterior trochanter. Chatterjee (1999) remarked on the absence
of a fourth trochanter; however, the area where the
fourth trochanter would be present is not preserved in any
specimen. The proximal portion of the femur is similar to
that of coelophysoids as noted by Hutchinson (2001).

The astragalus retains a deep fibular facet, a character
retained in basal dinosaurs and basal theropods, but
lost in maniraptoran theropods

So Archie is a time traveller now?

How do you get birds -- FULLY FORMED BIRDS AT THAT -- alive at the time of the earliest dinosaurs, before they could have ever started evolving on avian lines?

NOW we can add to this the fact that Archie didn't appear in the fossil records until after his supposed descendants were already on the scene.

The evidence stacks against you in the words of qualified scientists, and I still suppose you'll insist you won this debate.

You guys are lightweights.

I'm through playing with you clowns.

we dont thats the great thing about evolution we dont decide on any part of it

Originally posted by The Matrix Traveller
reply to post by noobfun

---

we dont thats the great thing about evolution we dont decide on any part of it

What does then????

No it It's a god but what does???????

Cheers...