Some Dinosaurs evolved from birds, not the other way around.

Well this is very interesting. For years the general consensus regarding small bird-like raptors was that they eventually became feathered and evolved into birds. Well, This article challenges that idea and presents the reasoning for a re-think.

The idea here is that birds and dinosaurs evolved from a common ancestry, birds develped flight, then some species became flightless and evolved back into the small bird-like dinosaurs.

And here I was thinking we had that one pretty wrapped up!

linky:
www.sciencedaily.com...


Edit to rectify a mistake.

[edit on 11-2-2010 by Chonx]

reply to post by Chonx


Hi!

Thanks for the post - like most people I assumed it was the other way round. And Therapods - they seldom receive publicity they deserve.

Think I might treat emus, kiwis and ostriches with more respect - you never know how they may evolve...

Peace!

reply to post by Chonx

The weight of the evidence is now suggesting that not only did birds not descend from dinosaurs, Ruben said, but that some species now believed to be dinosaurs may have descended from birds.

"We're finally breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with," Ruben said. "This issue isn't resolved at all. There are just too many inconsistencies with the idea that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that."

Almost 20 years of research at OSU on the morphology of birds and dinosaurs, along with other studies and the newest PNAS research, Ruben said, are actually much more consistent with a different premise -- that birds may have had an ancient common ancestor with dinosaurs, but they evolved separately on their own path, and after millions of years of separate evolution birds also gave rise to the raptors. Small animals such as velociraptor that have generally been thought to be dinosaurs are more likely flightless birds, he said.

Awesome suggestion.

reply to post by The Wave


It's all part of their plan to re-take the planet!

Seriously though, does this mean that raptors now need to be declassified as dinosaurs? sure they have a lot in common with Theropods but... well, they evolved from birds!

Also, I wonder if any other aspects of our understanding of the evolutionary chain of events are wrong or backwards.

Maybe monkeys evolved from humans a few million years back!

(the last sentence is a joke, just in case..)

Doubtful.

Dinosaurs were lizards that grew super big due to pre-flood conditions.

I think some overlap is possible. And your gonna have a few weird species in the process. Though I don't know if I totally buy this theory.

General Consensus wrong again!

I guess some rogue scientists didn't sign the consensus petition declaring this issue resolved.

the only problem i have with this "discovery" is, why would birds who have a four chambered heart which FLY need to Evolve, or in my opinion, De- Evolving into Ground dwelling quadruped or biped with a three chambered heart?

reply to post by l neXus l


Well, I guess the assumption would be that it was more advantageous for them at the time, in that environment The specifics of which would be quite difficult to determine with the number of gaps in the fossil record and knowledge about the climate at the time, in my opinion. That might take time and new discoveries.

haven't you ever played Super Mario chonx? its better to have a flying Mario then a running Mario. you avoid things on the ground that can hurt you

i would think the would Evolve feathers, to get away from all the crowded ground space, and predators

Wouldn't DNA evidence verify this theory? Can't scientists follow the gene path like they have done with humans?

Interesting.

Reminds me of a story I once heard.

" A little boy goes to his priest and ask him, " Is it true that Man came from dust and when we die we go back to dust?"

The priest says, " Why yes that's true, why do you ask?"

Little Boy says, " Well would you come over to my house and look under my bed 'cus I think somebodies either coming or going..."

Originally posted by l neXus l
haven't you ever played Super Mario chonx? its better to have a flying Mario then a running Mario. you avoid things on the ground that can hurt you

i would think the would Evolve feathers, to get away from all the crowded ground space, and predators

Unless you're in a water level.. or underground... or there is something blocking take-off..

I see what you're saying but I don't think that flying would neccesarily be an advantage in every situation a creature could find itself in..

Anyway, It's all about the fire flower....

[edit on 11-2-2010 by Chonx]

im pretty sure you can relate Mario to everything in life, so yes mods this is not off topic banter

I don't think the kind of "birds" in the article are grackles and the like that we see flapping around today. I think the second premise (birds and dinosaurs have different ancestors) is the best one. As far as I know, there aren't any true birds that are as old as the oldest true dinosaurs.

Nothing new to me. Years ago I picked up Gregory Paul's "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" first published in 1988, where he proposes the same idea. His hypothesis was that not only did birds evolve from therapods, but that some groups of therapods are the descendant of birds. He divides the therapods into three categories.

First are the "primitive" sort, dinosaurs like coelophysis, spinosaurus, baryonyx, and dilophosaurus. These therapods have a notched snout, lithe, sinuous bodies, and long, maneuverable arms.

The second group are birds

And the third groups includes the majority of the later therapods, from compsognathids all the way to tyrannosaurs. These species evidence a stiff, rigid skeleton, short, folded arms, generally beaklike jaws (compared to the "primitive" therapods) and had feathers (Paul was actually guessing on the idea of feathers on therapods; in 1988, no such fosils had been found)

I found it a very interesting book, and it always made sense to me. Kind of nice to see it gathering support from fossil evidence ratehr than simply being a neat hypothesis.

Well, I'm a little confused...

...Where did the birds we have today come from? If the birds came "first", where is the fossil record of birds living throughout the whole dinosaur era?

I'm sure you all will go pointing out to me what the article said about velociraptors have more in common with birds than, say, T. rex, and the velociraptors were the birds --- but that's my point.

If I understand this article correctly, it says that today's birds perhaps evolved from velociraptor-type animals rather than from therapods (T. rex-style dinosaurs). But how is that so much different than what people have been saying for the past 20 years? Whenever a scientist says that birds evolved from dinosaurs, it's always the raptor-type "dinosaurs" that they point to as evidence -- just like this article. They never point to T. rex and say "that's where birds came from".

For that reason, I don't think scientists have been wrong for the past 20 years.

All this new study seems to be saying is that the raptors were not just like all of the other dinosaurs -- or perhaps they should not be called dinosaurs at all. However, the way I see it, raptor-style dinosaurs could be just considered a different "kind" of dinosaur -- and that's the kind of dinosaur that evolved into today's birds.

Obviously, velociraptors did not evolve from "today's birds", or there would be a fossil record. rather today's birds evolved from velociraptors-style animals -- and that's what scientist's have been saying all along. The question is this: should we call velociraptors "dinosaurs".

It doesn't seem a huge paradigm shift as much as a question of semantics.



[edit on 2/11/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by l neXus l


Being a friggin' velociraptor is sometimes a pretty big advantage over being a bird. There's a limit to how big birds can get while still being able to fly, and it's about albatross size. But at the time, there was enough oxygen for land based theropods to get to spinosaurus size. Being a kind of cross between a wolf and an ostrich apparently was workable back then.

Didn't work out for them in the end, but at the time it was going pretty fantastically.

Well this is a real face/palm mental gymnastic. Who would have thought?
Very, very intriguing.

But it could be? The dino's evolved from birds? Nah. It's the other way around. Someone has blundered.

Couldn't be. Could it?

Good lord, what were they eating! Giant worms?

...oh Chonx, monkeys evolved from humans!