'Oldest bird' knocked off its perch

'Oldest bird' knocked off its perch

cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com

The newfound fossil of a 155 million-year-old feathered dinosaur has led scientists to claim that Archaeopteryx, the species long held forth as the "oldest bird," is no bird at all.

Chinese researchers made the claim in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, and an outside expert says the study "is likely to rock the paleontological community for years to come." Ohio University paleontologist Lawrence Witmer noted that the latest research, focusing on a fossil species dubbed Xiaotingia zhengi, comes 150 years after the discovery of Archaeopteryx, which marked a milestone in the study

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Pretty cool, although if they keep going back in time finding birds, scientists are gonna run out of dinosaurs to have them evolve from!

This bird looks pretty advanced, i.e. looking more bird than dinosaur, as does the Archaeopteryx, so whatever birds are supposed to have evolved from must've been quite birdlike already themselves.

The article goes on to mention that scientists may have to start debating how birds arose in the first place. Which is a good thing, I think. They've had the Archaeopteryx for 150 years now and nothing new to debate! It keeps 'em on their toes.

/TOA

cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

another famous and irrefutable transitional form bites the dust. soon evolutionists will say dinosaurs evolved from birds. pretty cool. i wish this creature were still around.

abcnews.go.com...

reply to post by The Old American


It evolved from an egg.



No seriously though. This actually pretty much trashed a whole fairly recent National Geographic article on how Birds evolved. Oh well, back to the drawing board I suppose.


I still say it came from an egg!

I'm not sure I understand that article. Archeopteryx was a dinosaur that had feathers - it most certainly wasn't a bird in the modern sense of the word. This is common knowledge, no?

Well, I've known this for years. In fact I could probably dig up some journal articles from several years ago that say the same thing as this article, that Archeopteryx wasn't a bird but a dinosaur with feathers, and that it's not the only one.

At least that is what I think the article is saying. I'm beginning to doubt my English language skills. I'm really not sure what exactly the article is getting at. Can someone clarify it for me, maybe just sum up its main point in a sentence? Is it really talking about a fact that's been very well known for many years as if it's new information?

Don't forget evolution is just a theory... And it is quite a strong one

I'm sure in the future we will have to rewrite the history book regarding many subjects... As we have already done many times In The past..

The problem with things like this is that mainstream scientists, may have out their whole lives work into something and then someone comes along and tells them they were wrong all along..
That's why alot of these new theories will never be accepted by some mainstream scientists..

IMHO.

I think the Dinosaurs started to adapt to a changing environment and started to develop early feathers to keep warm and would lose them as they matured. Maybe the smaller ones found them useful by adapting to a jumping to escape technique which later their arms developed into wings.

I think what the article is saying is that they found a version more bird like than Dinosaur which is older than the previous one.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


Actually the notion of some dinosaurs having evolved from birds is rather old. Gregory S Paul's "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" presented the idea that certain therapods are actually descended from birds in 1988. he also predicted that most of these creatures had feathers - well before the Chinese discoveries confirming that notion.

The cladistics of the archosauria - Crocodiles, Birds, Pterosaurs, and Dinosaurs, plus a few others - is probably way more complex than we can reconstruct with the two skinny twigs of the family tree that are currently existing, and a handful of fossils of the group of animals that once dominated the globe.

reply to post by Misterlondon


Please, please, please stop abusing the word "theory." I beg of you. Please. it's suffered enough already.

One problem, which I hinted at, is that if they keep finding older and older dinos with feathers, dinos are going to be found to have evolved from birds!

My personal believe is that...I dunno. I'm a very "show me proof" type of person, which can be somewhat limiting. But each side of the evolutionist/creationist debate gives their own spurious evidence to prove that their theory is right.

For example, evolutionists like to hold up pakicetus as a "transitional" species of land mammal to whale. But the only correlation that can be made is that the eye orbits are higher than most mammals and their limb bones were dense. I'm sorry, but that's like saying "meerkats have ears and humans have ears therefore humans evolved from meerkats".

Creationists always fall back on the "the bible mentions dinosaurs in the leviathan and behemoth", then proudly saying "TA DA!" If there were dinosaurs 6000 years ago the bible would be rife with stories not of Elijah and the bears, but of Elijah and the velociraptors.

Neither side is willing to give in and say "I have no idea" because they're too busy saying, not "I am right!", but "You are wrong!"

/TOA

Did anyone even bother reading the article, clearly the scientists who made this discovery are only stating that Archeopteryx cannot be classified as a bird, but it doesn't mean it was not an ancestor of birds. Please read the articles before you make a fool of yourselves again.

Originally posted by The Old AmericanCreationists always fall back on the "the bible mentions dinosaurs in the leviathan and behemoth", then proudly saying "TA DA!" If there were dinosaurs 6000 years ago the bible would be rife with stories not of Elijah and the bears, but of Elijah and the velociraptors.
/TOA

Hebrew words "tanniym/tanniyn" was translated to dragon in KJV, it is found throughout the Bible. The word dinosaur wasn't invented until the 1800s. Behemoth/Leviathan were specific species of dragons/dinosaurs. I'm quite sure penguins, rhinos, tigers, giraffes, and sharks existed 6000 years ago, but the Bible doesn't mention them. This is because the Bible isn't a autubon society book on animals, it's a narative/instructional book from God to man. Furthermore, if humans in Bible times were anything like humans today, either they would not settle in an area full of dangerous predators, or they would kill off any creatures that were considered a threat, then settle, so this is one possible reason as to why there isn't much dinosaur/dragon interaction recorded.

reply to post by kingofmd


Or the book could just be factually incorrect.

You know. Like Harry Potter.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


I'm guessing you didn't understand the article. It's not saying that achaeoptyrix was not an antecedent of dinosaurs, it is saying that they have found a new species that fits the classification of being the 'first bird' more correctly. Archaeopteryx would probably now be considered a protobird.

I don't think any scientist or palaeontologist would have said that archaeopteryx was irrefutable.

reply to post by The Old American

Neither side is willing to give in and say "I have no idea" because they're too busy saying, not "I am right!", but "You are wrong!"

Quite! It never ceases to amaze me how Man's ego can be so robust, that he sometimes simply cannot admit when he is utterly clueless.