Fossil Solves Mystery of Dinosaur Finger Evolution

Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma.

Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have digits 2, 3 and 4.

That mismatch failed to support the widely accepted evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

Now, newly described fossilized hands from a beaked, plant-eating dinosaur, called Limusaurus inextricabilis, reveal a transitional step in the evolution of modern wings from dino digits. The finding could resolve a debate over which fingers ultimately became embedded in the wing.

"Limusaurus is another one of those discoveries that makes one excited to be a paleontologist," said Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, .. "The discovery of a toothless, plant-eating Jurassic ceratosaur, from Asia of all places, is something that nobody in our field ever expected."

The remains of the dinosaur were discovered in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, in northwestern China. The deposits date back some 159 million years.

"This new animal is fascinating in and of itself, and when placed into an evolutionary context it offers intriguing evidence about how the hand of birds evolved," said James Clark of George Washington University. ..

Jack Conrad, vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, calls the finding a "spectacular discovery." Conrad was not involved in this current research.

Science is concerned with what can be concluded by examining physical evidence and conducting experiments. Faith has no place.

Religion is based on faith and the scriptures and one’s interpretation of scripture. If Christian scripture was so clear and obvious, you wouldn’t have so many different Christian sects claiming their own interpretation of scripture was the only true version.

I find it puzzling to have to define the diference between Theology and Science.

But then perhaps that explains the obtuseness of the anti-evolutionary mind.

I have two degrees in zoology. I think I know the reasonableness of evolution as a scientific “theory”.

I am also a self-confessed Christian who basically believes in the Bible as a soiurce of religious and moral dogma. I have no problem reconciling my faith with scientific fact.

Its unfortunate some other individuals’ faith is so shallow they need to reject scientific facts to confirm their religious beliefs.

I think I know the reasonableness of evolution as a scientific “theory”.

Really?

So, can you make a testable prediction based upon this theory?

Can you even tell me what the theory is? Is it based in any way upon what Darwin wrote in Origin of Species? What text best explains this theory to students?

I have several texts that supposedly deal with evolution. E.g. I have Freeman and Herron's Evolutionary Analysis 3rd Edition at hand; 802 pages. It has one chapter on speciation, which is all we're talking about here. The chapter begins on page 583. It runs on to page 614. The rest is primarily fluff, not very different from the stuff in Genesis where Jacob breeds spotted goats. The index references to speciation are: 37, 102-3, 574, 583-614. In other words a book on evolution has 36 pages out of 802 pages which even attempt to touch on the topic. I haven't looked at the speciation chapter recently but my recollection is that it doesn't do much to explain how a new animal species might arise; and answers no questions that I might raise. If you think this is science, you should return your degrees.

ML/NJ

A brief perusal of his page tells me that renouned Hebrew scholar and high school teacher Glenn Elert probably ought to stick to physics. This is Elert's expert characterization of Biblical heurmenuetics:

"The message here is, I think, obvious. The Bible is the literal truth only when it's convenient and doesn't conflict with overwhelming evidence. In my view, this invalidates the core of the anti-evolutionary movement in its entirety. If the Bible is open to interpretation from time to time, then it is open to interpretation at any time. If the Bible is occasionally poetic, then it is possibly poetic at any time -- even on the first page, even on the last page, even on every page."

He doesn't cite any source to substantiate his cartoon caricature of Biblical hermeneutics and scholarship. However, his his own rule of interpretation apparently requires one to ignore the context and type of the literature in question when necessary to maintain the pretense that the Bible doesn't make sense or is inaccurate in some scientific way. His logic is that because some of the Bible is poetic all of it can possibly be poetic, with the exception that Hebrew poetic literature should not be interpreted as poetry, and ordinary phenomenological language and idiomatic expressions ought always be interpreted anachronistically in a modern, "progressive" Western, hyper-literal sense where such interpretations are useful for discrediting the Bible. Thus:

Psalms 19:4-6
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.
Ecclesiastes 1:5
The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

means that "sunrise" and "sunset" are proof that the Bible is inaccurate scientifically.

Mr. Elert has apparently never heard of phenomenological language:

Almanac

Key: T = Trace of precipitation; MM = data not available

June 18, 2009

Normal high: 86° Record high: 100° (1953)

Normal low: 67° Record low: 52° (1961)

Sunrise : 5:35 AM Moon Rise: 1:53 AM

Sunset: 8:28 PM Moon Set: 4:09 PM

Complete weather almanac

Detailed History and Climate

Cordially,

Science is concerned with what can be concluded by examining physical evidence and conducting experiments.

[...]I find it puzzling to have to define the diference between Theology and Science.

What experiment did you conduct to arrive at that definition?

[...] the obtuseness of the anti-evolutionary mind

There you go again, smuggling transcendence into evolution.

Cordially,

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