Posted on 03/15/2006 12:23:34 PM PST by The_Victor
From the article:
The new fossil is nearly complete, apart from a missing part of its long tail, and shows soft tissue and an imprint of the skin but no feathers.Removed feathers would have left a noticeable "chicken skin" imprint, I think. Still, too many viable scenarios to draw any detailed conclusions just yet.
Based solely on the footprints they determined that the dinosaur was a meat-eater.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1504547/posts
The answer is simple - it got plucked before it died. Maybe Space Aliens, maybe Noah was hungry. The possibilities are endless.
Maybe an even better point. Those monotremes are in the mammal group but their line branched off on its own way back there.
What we're doing is learning more about the early history of the coelurosaur taxon. More data points should help to tell a more coherent story.
There are no problems in science, only opportunities.
I think this is fascinating. If this isn't some aberration, it means that there were closely related species, some with feathers, some without.
One possibility is that feathers evolved more than once. I think this is highly likely. This means it should be possible to find different genes for feathers from widely divergent modern bird species. Unless of course, the line went extinct.
Every dispute, unexpected result, and unanswered question is proof that science is a house of cards about to fall. Except it never does, of course.
Reality does not impinge upon people who pin their hopes on such phantoms.
Something a lot of people fail to take into account. Most fossil finds are "branches" off any main line connecting one species to another. Extinction plays a huge role in evolution & the formation of the fossil record that we observe.
Yep, I still can't figure out why humans don't have nice full coats of body hair. After all, aren't we the cream of the evolutionary crop? Why evolve to have to wear clothes?
so when new evidence tells you the overall theory may be
incorrect, you just make the theory more complicated to explain all the variations? Kinda like Ptolemy, no?
Just compare ichthyosaurs to modern whales. Many similar traits in distinctly different lineage of species.
The Smithsonian has a bunch too. I especially like the glyptodons, huge armadillos that may have been hunted to extinction because people used their shells as **shelters**.
And if you want to know why we seem to be evolving away from that (ew!), just ask yourself if you would want to mate with anything with that much hair.
*shudder*
The monotremes are an excellent thing to mention in discussions of mammalian evolution. Australia got isolated at the perfect time to evolve a whole series of wierd mammals, unlike those anywhere else on the planet.
Marsupials, monotremes, and others. The Opossum is about the only marsupial anywhere outside of Australia. No monotremes exist except in Australia and the surrounding islands.
It's a perfect study of mammalian evolution. Every type of animal, from big herbivores to carnivorous predators evolved there, and in a unique way. The isolation is what did it.
It's inexplicable, except through evolution.
So far, and this is documented, no feathers have been found on any dino fossils, regardless of the claims. They have all been proven to be false and not feathers. However, evos continue to chant the feathers on dinos mantra. They are like Dems, they will believe what they want and to hell with the trurh, the feather hoax continues. I am NOT a christian, NOT a creationist or IDer, just a guy who wants the truth to be told. If evolution is real, then their is no need for fakes and false claims, although they continue unabated and with no shame from the evos!
I meant to include you in the To: list on post 54
Yes, the glyptodons. What an interesting group of mammals!
Because all dinosaurs found with that foot-shape previously (and there have been many of them) have been determined to be meat-eaters by other evidence, such as jaw-construction and body designed for predation.
It isn't definite, but the inference is strong.
So, the feather imprints on the archeopteryx fossils aren't feathers?
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