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Living dinosaurs
abc.net.au ^
| 9/30/2002
Posted on 10/01/2002 8:32:43 AM PDT by SteveH
News in Science
News in Science 30/9/2002 Living dinosaurs
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s687677.htm]
If we are to believe the message of a new exhibit demonstrating the evolutionary transition from dinosaurs to birds, dinosaurs are not extinct.
Four life-sized reconstructions of ferocious-looking, smart-thinking, flesh-eating feathered dinosaurs – representing 125 million-year-old missing links between dinosaurs and birds – have landed at the Australian Museum in Sydney as part of the Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition.
"The birds we see flying around our backyards are actually living dinosaurs, descendants of prehistoric beasts we all once presumed became extinct 65 million years ago," said museum director, Professor Mike Archer.
"But feathers were evolving as dinosaur attributes long before they became valuable as flight structures," he said.
"Indeed fossils uncovered in the Liaoning Province of China have provided a whole sequence of missing links in the dinosaur to bird story."
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Model of Sinornithosaurus smillenii (pronounced 'sine-or-nith-oh-saw-rus mill-en-ee-eye) made by Alan Groves working with palaeontologists Drs Walter Boles and Sue Hand.
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One of the earlier links is Sinosauropteryx prima. The creature is covered with what looks to be a fine fuzz but are really small barbs – a link between scales and feathers.
"It's a metre-long, meat-eating, ground-dwelling predator, closely related to the dinosaur in Jurassic Park II which ate the little girl on the beach," said Professor Archer.
He speculated these very early feathers were probably for insulation since this group was almost certainly warm blooded.
The Sinornithosaurus millenii (top picture) embodies a later link.
"This is a very vicious little predator about a metre long. But here the feathers are much larger – although they're not fully formed or capable of flight," said Professor Archer.
An interesting characteristic of the creature was its capacity to lift its arms over its head in a flapping motion. Professor Archer said scientists assumed its array of feathers had a purpose – to frighten predators, help capture prey, attract mates or threaten male competitors.
The next stage – the development of feathers for flight – is seen in creatures like the Archseopteryx, a smaller animal than Sinornithosaurus millenii with longer and assymetrical feathers.
While there has been some debate as to whether dinosaurs (unlike other groups of reptiles) are the ancestors of birds, Professor Archer believes since 1996 there has been no strong argument against the hypothesis.
"I don't know anyone who is still holding out on this one," he said. "Other than the creationists of course who don't want anything to be ancestral to birds."
Chinese Dinosaurs is open until February next year. The dino-bird exhibit is sponsored by The Australian Skeptics.
Anna Salleh - ABC Science Online
More Info?
British Natural History Museum Dino-Birds Exhibition
Missing link from fur to feathers – News in Science 27/4/2001
Dinosaur fossil with proto-feathers – News in Science 8/3/2001
Dinosaur-bird theory defended – News in Science 24/11/2000
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© ABC 2002 | privacy
TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: birds; crevolist; dinosaurs; evolution; paleontology
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
But he's a really good coder. In that case, keep him away from the hardware, and you should be fine ;)
To: VadeRetro
Some kind of imaginary superiority comlex...sub troll!
To: All
I'm convinced...
cooling layers from the bottom!
No evolution---NONE
To: <1/1,000,000th%
was talking to a C++ programmer I work with who said that science was something he knew a lot about, and that Compact Discs were written and read magnetically. Oh, man; that's REALLY bad.
Does he wear magnets in front of his eyes for reading glasses?
;-)
To: SteveH
If this isn't about the lamest stretch of the imagination in pursuit of an agenda..
145
posted on
10/01/2002 8:33:28 PM PDT
by
Havoc
To: gore3000
It is a true statement. The only pre-cambrian multi-cellular animal is a worm. This does not explain the over 40 multicellular phyla that arose all of a sudden in the Cambrian. Nope.
Ediacaria, Cyclomedusa and Hiemalora were not worms.
I'm surprised you're not quoting John Woodmorappe. He seems like someone you'd be interested in.
Comment #147 Removed by Moderator
To: teresat
"Your cat looks exactly like my cat...well except my cat weighs 21 lbs..."
Timmy isn't very far away from your cat's weight. I believe the last time he went to the vet, he was about 20 1/2 lbs. This photo was taken about 3 years ago.
To: All
overall the lower sub surface crust and plates formed from the bottom!
Rather quickly too---ruling out the mutation/morph theory!
To: All
weenies!
To: gore3000
bttt
To: gore3000
bttt
To: <1/1,000,000th%
Ediacaria, Cyclomedusa and Hiemalora were not worms. There were a few weird fossils which never made it to the Cambrian so they are irrelevant to the discussion. As I said, all this Vendian stuff had been discovered by the time that Eldredge and Gould gave up on Darwinian evolution - and for good reason. In fact, the latest major discovery in the field has been the discovery of a vertebrate fish in the Cambrian adding to the number of phyla which have no ancestry before the Cambrian. In other words, the doo doo is getting deeper, not shallower for evolution.
To: f.Christian
Sedimentary levels in specific-smaller areas can form...miles deep---
Where are the sediments derived from? What if the sedimentary layers are thicker than the potential maximum height of the adjacent source area?
but overall the lower sub surface crust and plates formed from the bottom!
Seafloor crust is distinctly different from continental crust (basaltic vs granitic in a nutshell). How did seafloor crust get on continental crust in some areas? Why does currently existing seafloor crust consistently date younger than continental crust?
To: f.Christian
cooling layers from the bottom!
How did the outer core reliquify then? Why is the surface cooler than the Asthenosphere?
To: Axenolith
I live in Hawaii and see a variety of 'lava'...
nothing is totally uniform---
for the appalachians type mountains to form the surface of the earth must have expanded....
via plates breaking up/cracks-shrinking---
width of the crack---width of the mountains---
triangular pointing up!
What plate tuetonics/earthquakes do is mostly unpredictable.
But their formation and the surface/layering is obvious...top first---layering from the bottom!
Only some/little surface layering from above!
Very young---FRESH-new Earth!
To: f.Christian
but overall the lower sub surface crust and plates formed from the bottom!
Are you familiar with Thermodynamics? Heat does not pass from cooler to warmer. The only circumstance your assertion would allow for would be an earth in which the center was solid and progressivly warmer outward. This is demonstrably not true from seismic, volcanic, and thermal gradients from borings and mines among other things.
To: Axenolith
The canyons would be different/same than the plates because as the plates cracked--widening...
the slope--triangle would be inverted---pointing down.
Not enough expansion---'lava' to form mountains!
Matter of 'fact'...the top layers would be the actual layers from the sides of the plate but the lower levels would be fresh layers pushed out from underneath to fill the widening cracks!
The diameter of the earth could be increasing and/or the plates just settling---sinking pushing the material up to form the canyon walls/layering!!
To: Axenolith
What about those diamond pipes?
The whole thermodynamics would say they were coming up from lower hotter levels---higher pressures!
To: Axenolith
Cooling would progress from the surface toward the center in blocks/plates---layers!
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