Fossil Strengthens Dinosaur-Bird Link

discovery online,reuters ^ | feb-14-2002 | reuters

[green team 1999]

Fossil Strengthens Dinosaur-Bird Link

Feb. 14 — A 130 million-year-old newly discovered fossil of a small meat-eating dinosaur found in China is further proof of the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, scientists say.
"This animal is not a direct ancestor to birds but it is a very close cousin. It is from a group called troodontids which is closely related to birds," Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum in Chicago said on Wednesday. The new dinosaur, called Sinovenator changii, was probably feathered and is almost the same age as the oldest known bird Archaeopteryx.

"The similarities in the skeleton between animals like Sinovenator and Archaeopteryx are very striking,"said Makovicky.

Sinovenator was a two-legged predator like the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex but it was the size of a large chicken with a skeleton less than three feet (one meter) long.

It had a bird-like shoulder joint, a wishbone and a pelvic bone that points backward, similar to modern birds and was found in the fossil beds in northeastern China's Liaoning Province, an area that has yielded other important fossils.

"It demonstrates that major structural modification toward birds occurred much earlier in the evolutionary process than previously thought," said Makovicky, who reported the findings in the science journal Nature.

Paleontologists have been strongly divided over whether birds evolved from dinosaurs. But Makovicky, who co-authored the Nature report with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the dinosaur fossil should resolve the issue.

"These findings help counter, once and for all, the position of paleontologists who argue that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs," he said.

EVOLUTIONARY TREE

Scientists weren't sure exactly where troodontids were placed in the evolutionary tree because they had features that are present in birds and others found in different dinosaur groups.

Sinovenator will help eliminate some of the confusion, said Makovicky, adding that the fossil also cuts the time gap between the appearance of birds and dinosaurs that are closely related to them.

"The discovery of Sinovenator is important because it is the earliest troodontid dinosaur yet discovered," said Dr. Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History.

"It is very close to the age of Archaeopteryx. This means that any perceived problem about differences in age between the origin of birds and the occurrence of small bird-like theropods disappears," he added in a statement.

Theropod dinosaurs, two legged predators such as Sinovenator, and birds have more than 100 similar anatomical features including a wishbone, swiveling wrists and three forward pointing toes.

"Our study suggests that dromaeosaurs (swift running theropods) and troodontids are each others' closest relatives and that those two groups share a close common ancestor with birds," said Makovicky.

for information and discusion only,not for profit etc,etc.

[green team 1999]

i wonder,if mankind destroy itself and birds survive,would evolution return the big dinos to earth ?

[Enlightiator]

"These findings help counter, once and for all, the position of paleontologists who argue that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs," he said.

Wishful thinking. The debate will continue....

[Asclepius]

... Sinovenator will help eliminate some of the confusion ...

I'm still confused.

[hinckley buzzard]

I'm confused too. A virtually identical "find" was reported a couple years ago, raised a bit of excitement among the enthusiasts, but shortly thereafter was debunked by more sober (and unbiased) analysis. The first story was so similar to this one that I wonder if they are not both about the same fossils.

It is of course possible that just a couple years apart, separate finds of Chinese fossils would appear, to provide a reptile-bird "missing link," so-called "feathers" and all;

and it is just possible that even though the first report was a hoax, the second one, sounding just like the first one, turns out to be real.

Yeah, could be...coincidences occur every day. Plus we have such an authoritataive source, in Nature, the magazine home of the great global warming hoax.

[Dimensio]

I'm confused too. A virtually identical "find" was reported a couple years ago, raised a bit of excitement among the enthusiasts, but shortly thereafter was debunked by more sober (and unbiased) analysis. The first story was so similar to this one that I wonder if they are not both about the same fossils.

Well just wait and see. Scientists are good at picking apart one another's work (er, within the same field -- I wouldn't trust a mathematician or a physicist to "debunk" biological evolution, because that's not their field) and if there's something inconsistent or inaccurate about the findings, it'll come out.

[Sabertooth]

Dinosaurs!

Caudipteryx

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping! :)

[PatrickHenry]

There are no transitional fossils.
</creationism mode>

[VadeRetro]

"These findings help counter, once and for all, the position of paleontologists who argue that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs," he said.

Thanks for the ping. A few individuals I talk to a lot try to make hay because a small handful of paleos argue against birds coming out of dinosaurs. The good news is that this particular controversy is running out of gas. The bad news is there's always something to argue about.

[f.Christian]

You are trying to destroy liberalism on the FR and in society by posting this foolishness here...right?

[VadeRetro]

You are trying to destroy liberalism on the FR and in society by posting this foolishness here...right?

One thread ago you were calling me a liberal. At any rate, I'm making it clear to the lurkers that some conservatives are pro-science, pro-logic, and generally write in sentences.

[f.Christian]

"The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the rise of positive sciences, and with this an intensification in skepticism about God and the claims of traditional religion, especially among the educated classes. This inclination became most marked after the publication of The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man by the naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin ascribed man's immediate ancestry to the anthropoids, supposedly through a process of gradual evolution. Man was no longer a creature made in the image of God, but merely a natural extension of certain lower forms of life... a refined gorilla, as it were. It was these circumstances, and this intellectual milieu, that led philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to declare that "God is dead" and to predict the rise of new and terrible manisfestations of barbarism in the century that was to come. As he put it, "For ... we shall have upheavals, a convulsion of earthquakes, a moving of mountains and valleys, the like of which have never yet been dreamed of ... there will be wars the like of which have never yet been seen on earth." The non-believer Nietzsche would agree wholly with the Christian believer Dostoyevsky about one thing: Without faith in God, all horrors, all of man's worst nightmares, would become possible. And so they did. What men believe really matters."

[VadeRetro]

You're saying that we can't handle the truth. But we have to and anyway I for one want it.

[f.Christian]

Gorilla truth--logic--sense!

[VadeRetro]

f.Christian, that haiku-ing freeper
Makes half as much sense as your beeper.
He finds science scary,
Of progress he's wary.
I must say that this one's no "keeper."

[f.Christian]

Well spoken for a fossil/chest thumper who assumes too much!

[RadioAstronomer]

There are no transitional fossils.

</creationism mode>

ROFL! (non creationist mode :))

[longshadow]

You are trying to destroy liberalism on the FR and in society by posting this foolishness here...right?

And I suppose you post your incoherent, rambling sentence fragments on FR in order to demonstrate to society the dangers of reducing Thorazine dosage without a doctor's approval...right?

[RadioAstronomer]

And I suppose you post your incoherent, rambling sentence fragments on FR in order to demonstrate to society the dangers of reducing Thorazine dosage without a doctor's approval...right?

ROTFLMAO

[Centurion2000]

i wonder,if mankind destroy itself and birds survive,would evolution return the big dinos to earth ?

Actually there were some pretty dangerous bird predators that took the niches that mountain lions, jaguars and pumas have in the Americas.

They died out about 10,000 years ago but going after a 3 meter tall bird with a beak that could slice off your arm and heavy claws on it's feet would be no picnic.