Living dinosaurs

abc.net.au ^ | 9/30/2002

[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]

	Model of Sinosauropteryx sprima (pronounced 'sine-oh-saw-op-te-rix pree-ma')made by Alan Groves working with palaeontologists Drs Walter Boles and Sue Hand.

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."

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.
 

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

© ABC 2002 | privacy

[f.Christian]

It's against the rules of the FR to divulge other peoples's identity!

[gore3000]

Anyone who clicks on your home page sees something whiter than white.

And purposely so. I know the kind of people I am dealing with and I know that they are always looking for dirt for personal attacks. I am not interested in such juvenile and deplorable behavior so I neither look for nor offer opportunities for them.

[f.Christian]

Evolution is spam---vomit!

"We already know that there was once a very tall chain of mountains in the area that occupied the Grand Canyon. These mountains were, over many millions of years, eventually eroded away to form a level plain."

Like this barf you're forcing down everyone's throat!

[VadeRetro]

It's against the rules of the FR to divulge other peoples's identity!

And that helps you how, exactly?

[Aracelis]

Interesting screen name. I assume you are extolling the virtues of the versatile pig, or perhaps you are aspiring to them...?

[Junior]

No one revealed anyone else's identity. Vade revealed his own, medved revealed his own, you can find mine readily (I like a little mystery). Pope Gore MMM is simply one of the biggest hypocrites going.

[f.Christian]

"No one doubts the improbability of events. Your existence is highly improbable. So is mine. Think of all the events in just the past 100 generations which could have caused any of our ancestors to behave differently than they did. Yet all the past events happened, naturally, step by step, and here we are, so mere improbability is not much of an issue."
"The facts upon which evolution theory is based are rather well established. Mutations happen. They really do. And new species appear over time, really. And they appear in form and DNA to be related to pre-existing species. No joke, that's the evidence. In every generation, those best suited for the game of life are most likely to breed the next generation. Mutation and natural selection. And time, lots of time. They're the stuff of evolution."

"The results are always going to be seen as improbable in retrospect, but that's how things happen. It's such a reasonable explanation that there's no need to wave it all away and grasp instead for an external "designer" for whom there is no evidence at all.

"So I don't see ID as an "honest attempt" to deal with improbability. Rather, it's a clever attempt to confuse the poorly trained public with slick (but unscientific) patter."

353 posted on 9/19/02 2:24 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry

[VadeRetro]

And purposely so. I know the kind of people I am dealing with and I know that they are always looking for dirt for personal attacks. I am not interested in such juvenile and deplorable behavior so I neither look for nor offer opportunities for them.

You know the kind of person you are: how mean, dishonest, hypocritical, and despicable. You fear the stain of your actions. Deservedly so. Now, shut up about who's anonymous and who isn't. The anonymous troll, the cowardly spew-monger, is yourself and only yourself.

[Junior]

Then you're a coward. You can dish it out, but you can't take it.

[general_re]

And purposely so. I know the kind of people I am dealing with and I know that they are always looking for dirt for personal attacks. I am not interested in such juvenile and deplorable behavior so I neither look for nor offer opportunities for them.

Maybe you should just STFU about other people's anonymity, then, you worthless coward....

[f.Christian]

The Mentality of Evolution
There seems to be a cart before the horse attitude i.e. evolution has occurred, that's a fact ( it is never stated who proved this fact ), therefore we just need to twist the evidence until it fits our pre-conceptions. Of course, science is supposed to look at the evidence, and then derive the theory, but as Karl Popper admitted, the theory of evolution has never been a scientific theory due to its lack of testability, so normal scientific standards do not and have never applied to the theory of evolution. It has always been an emotional issue and not a scientific one - on all sides it must be stated in fairness. The main difference is that the worshippers of mechanistic reductionist Newtonian materialism try to pretend they are objective, when in reality most of them are not. The following extract from Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial puts it quite nicely:-

It is likely that Darwinist gradualism is statistically just as unlikely as Goldschmidt's saltationism, once we give adequate attention to all the necessary elements. The advantageous micro mutations postulated by Neo-Darwinist genetics are tiny, usually too small to be noticed. This premise is important because, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "virtually all the mutations studied in genetics laboratories which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them are deleterious to the animals possessing them." But if the necessary mutations are too small to be seen, there will have to be a great many of them (millions?) of the right type coming along when they are needed to carry on the long-term project of producing a complex organ.

The probability of Darwinist evolution depends upon the quantity of favorable micro mutations required to create complex organs and organisms, the frequency with which such favorable micro mutations occur just where and when they are needed, the efficacy of natural selection in preserving the slight improvements with sufficient consistency to permit the benefits to accumulate, and the time allowed by the fossil record for all this to have happened. Unless we can make calculations taking all these factors into account, we have no way of knowing whether evolution by micromutation is more or less improbable than evolution by macromutation.

Some mathematicians did try to make the calculations, and the result was a rather acrimonious confrontation between themselves and some of the leading Darwinists at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in 1967. The report of the exchange is fascinating, not just because of the substance of the mathematical challenge, but even more because of the logic of the Darwinist response. For example, the mathematician D. S. Ulam argued that it was highly improbable that the eye could have evolved by the accumulation of small mutations, because the number of mutations would have to be so large and the time available was not nearly long enough for them to appear. Sir Peter Medawar and C. H. Waddington responded that Ulam was doing his science backwards; the fact was that the eye had evolved and therefore the mathematical difficulties must be only apparent. Ernst Mayr observed that Ulam's calculations were based on assumptions that might be unfounded, and concluded that "Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred.

[gore3000]

And your real name is..?

None of your business (in fact, when I got my computer that is the name I put on it when asked for a name). Did not bother to click on all the links there,so I still do not know your name and frankly I could care less what it is.

Anyways, you have nothing to fear from your opponents, least of all me. Us Christians do not indulge in such scurrilous behavior as you evolutionists do. We have morals.

[gore3000]

Maybe you should just

Nope, you are the hypocrite and coward. You indulge is slander and lible while hiding yourself behind a pseudonim. Unlike you and your fellow Taliban of evolution I am not the least bit interested in attacking or abusing posters. I am interested in discussing issues honestly.

[VadeRetro]

So you wish to back off and eat these words, you ugly little troll:

I will say that you and your fellow evos are a bunch of cowards who go around attacking someone personally while hiding behind your pseudonyms.

For sure, you should not have flung such a rock from such a glass outhouse.

[f.Christian]

"twist(evolve*) the evidence(ideology*) until it... fits(link)---our pre-conceptions(bias*)."

*(mine)

[VadeRetro]

Will the real gore please step forward! Gore number one?

I will say that you and your fellow evos are a bunch of cowards who go around attacking someone personally while hiding behind your pseudonyms.

Or Gore number two?

Anyone who clicks on your home page sees something whiter than white.

And purposely so. I know the kind of people I am dealing with and I know that they are always looking for dirt for personal attacks. I am not interested in such juvenile and deplorable behavior so I neither look for nor offer opportunities for them.

What an utterly craven, blatantly hypocritical performance!

[f.Christian]

"The facts upon which evolution theory is based are rather well established. Mutations happen. They really do. And new species appear over time, really. And they appear in form and DNA to be related to pre-existing species. No joke, that's the evidence. In every generation, those best suited for the game of life are most likely to breed the next generation. Mutation and natural selection. And time, lots of time. They're the stuff of evolution."

[f.Christian]

What trash---folly...

"the fact was that the eye had evolved and therefore the mathematical difficulties must be only apparent. Ernst Mayr observed that Ulam's calculations were based on assumptions that might be unfounded, and concluded that "Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred."

No sane person could believe this madness/drool!

[f.Christian]

I read your bio page and thought you were trolling for the yeti---prehistoric social life!