Dinosaur-Bird Flap Ruffles Feathers

Yahoo!News ^ | October 10, 2005 | E.J. Mundell

[mlc9852]

MONDAY, Oct. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Head to the American Museum of Natural History's Web site, and you'll see the major draw this fall is a splashy exhibit on dinosaurs.

And not just any dinosaurs, but two-legged carnivorous, feathered "theropods" like the 30-inch-tall Bambiraptor -- somewhat less cuddly than its namesake.

The heyday of the theropods, which included scaly terrors like T. rex and velociraptor, stretched from the late Triassic (220 million years ago) to the late Cretaceous (65 million years ago) periods.

[newsgatherer]

Either you or she is lying, but, if she and you continue talking, please keep me informed.

A museum that claims they do not give tours to school kids, if you believe that, it is understadable that you believe in the theroy of coming from a rock, a rock that came from nothing.

Hey, I'm on my way to a gravel pit, want me to say "Hi" to any of your kin?

[newsgatherer]

And today's evolution breaking news

Hey, look what they are doing to your near kin.

Evolution, the religion that believes that man and goose are not only kin, but trace their roots back to the same acid rain socked rock.Billions and billions of years ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was nothing, absolutely nothing...

But the one I like best is the theory of the frog, Millions and millions of years ago in a swamp far far away lived a frog and over millions and millions of years, this lucky frog, who never got ate by a snake, fish or alligator, became a prince. I like the other kids version better, Once upon a time their was a princess, and she kissed a frog and puff it became a prince.

[hawkaw]

... I assure you that our educators are more able to support the Museum's position and second, we do not give tours.

Wow. Unreal friggin real ... What some people will do just to try to keep their beliefs and push their beliefs on others. This is about disgusting as people who suggest that if you practice proper empirical science in the theories of evolution you must be a liberal.

Thanks for this.

[hawkaw]

I'm sure glad you are on this board. Your posts are right on.

[From many - one.]

I'm sure you have a telephone, plus the ability to e-mail people at the museum.

[PatrickHenry]

[Thunderous applause!]

[VadeRetro]

If the evolution of life can be shown to be "in fact" inherently discontinuous then Darwin is falsified.

This becomes exceedingly dishonest. It has repeatedly been pointed out to you that neither Darwin himself nor anyone after expected the fossil record to be continuous. This is for inevitable reasons of geology as much as biology.

All that said, there are certain known cases where millions of years of geological deposition have continued uninterrupted on certain areas of sea floor.

Cores from such deposists have been microscopically examined and, guess what? Very long and sweeping completely smooth transitions exist.

Smooth Change in the Fossil Record.

A Smooth Fossil Transition: Foraminifera.

So where we have a gap-free fossil record, we have found instances of gap free evolution. So what were you saying?

If the evolution of life can be shown to be "in fact" inherently discontinuous then Darwin is falsified.

Perhaps the out is that it doesn't matter how many continuous histories we find, any discontinuous process of evolution falsifies Darwin?

Not really. Such discontinuous events as speciations by hybridization and polyploidy (I can Google, you can Google) have been identified and, no, Darwin is not falsified. These are rather interesting special cases which Darwin, knowing nothing of genetics, did not anticipate but it's no big deal.

[Stone Mountain]

Feel free to contact the museum yourself to verify the information.

[b_sharp]

Feathered dinosaurs liked flying so much they tried it twice.

Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, from the Neuquén Basin in central Argentina may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.

Details of the discovery appear in the academic journal Nature.

One theory suggests the lineage of dinosaurs the new animal belonged to, the dromaeosaurs, originated in the Cretaceous Period (144 to 65 million years ago).

But this discovery suggests their lineage can be traced further back in time, to the Jurassic (206 to 144 million years ago), experts say.

The authors say the discovery Rahonavis and Buitreraptor have long and wing-like forelimbs could imply that flight evolved twice, once in birds and once among this group of Gondwanan dromaeosaurs.

[furball4paws]

Hey. We have to stop the thunderous applause thingy. If we keep it up Ichy will explode and give birth to some new "kind" and create another gap.

[PatrickHenry]

Hey. We have to stop the thunderous applause thingy.

I can't help it. The Grand Master insists.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Where do you think I am going wrong? (Please be specific.)

You should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Merely arrogant ignorance.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Now you're just being offensively obnoxious. I explained the nature of your fallacies to you in my earlier post, but rather than gain any englightenment from that, you decide to just bluster on with your same flawed arguments, while cranking up the "in-your-face' quotient several notches. Be honest: Do you actually want to discuss the science, and maybe learn something yourself in the process, or do you just want to "preach" at us about how evolution's days are allegedly numbered? Knock it off!

You're becoming an insulting bore! If you want to debate....debate. .but knock off the insults.

However, I find your "pattern" illustrations useful. In a way that helps illuminate the problem of the gaps. The "pattern" is Darwin's vision of the continuum of life. The fossils are the dots. From a distance we see the "pattern". But under closer examination we see the dots (fossils). The question now becomes what is the reality? The "pattern" or the "dots"?

Come on, DRF, if you've done real engineering, you *know* how to do these kinds of analyses. If you have a process that occurs in a certain way, *and* you can only take samples or observations of that process at certain intervals or from certain narrow viewing angles or whatever, you know how to work out how to test whether the results of your limited sampling method matches the expected operational results or not. It's not rocket science.

Yes I have done a lot of analysis in my time. Mostly math modeling of electronic systems in order to get an understanding of the basic dynamics of their inherently discontinuous nature. I once worked in a section that was called "The Continuous Systems Section".

I'll try to give you my understanding of why I believe Darwin got it wrong.

You said: "...you can only take samples or observations of that process at certain intervals..." And their in lies the problem.

Darwin insisted that the evolution of life was a continuum of small micro changes over vast periods of time. The pattern he was perceiving in his mind was smooth and easily discernible. His mistake was a natural one. Humans look for patterns all the time. In our minds Patterns take priority over discontinuous, abrupt seemingly nonsensical jumbles of data. We gravitate to patterns because it enhances our ability to understand reality. And it's also intellectually fulfilling. But it can also mislead.

My career begin in the days of the slide rule. It was necessary to make assumptions about our systems since our computational abilities were severely limited in comparison with today. Because of these limitations we were forced to build "testbeds" and "breadboards" which became our defacto computational tools.

With the advent of the PC and mega computational power the necessity of test beds was reduced. We can now model very complex highly discontinuous systems that were once out of our computational reach.

Now back to Darwin. Darwin had a choice to make. When he saw the "... extreme imperfection of the geological record." His words. And how it contrasted with the "pattern" he visualized in his mind. He decided to fill the gaps in the record with rationals. I've done this myself by the way. He did this because the pattern was his priority not the data. He could have said "you know...the data is highly discontinuous and this leads me to believe that the evolution of life is discontinuous". But he didn't. And for perfectly understandable reasons. His "pattern" was easier to understand and more intellectually fulfilling. But it misled him to declare the "pattern" was the reality when in fact it was the "dots" that were the reality..

As some one who has worked with "patterns", (they are called linearized models in my profession), I can testify that they are of limited use. They provide some insight into the dynamics of a system but leave out an understanding of transient responses and nonlinear saturations ("hitting the rails") which is vital in the designing of a robust system. Hence the need for testbeds and breadboards.

There were people in my specialty at retirement (sophisticated switchmode power conversion systems) who were still clinging to the old "patterns". They are mostly old professors who made their reputations on and published many a textbook explaining the old "patterns".

But we now utilize the power of the PC. And we model discontinuous non linear models which give us a better and more complete understanding of the dynamics of systems.

The Darwinian "pattern" is something we formulate in our minds. The data is the reality. On closer examination we discover the "pattern" isn't continuous as Darwin once thought. It's extremely discontinuous. And Darwin's claim of a 'smooth continuum' is falsified.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do I detect a yearning for a free pass?

But if the defence were drawn offside, it won't work.

[js1138]

I think the defence has 12 men on the field.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Scientific revolutions are always resisted. As Kuhn makes clear. And they don't happen over night.

But Kuhn was mostly wrong. Quantum Mechanics was accepted almost universally within a year of Heisenberg's ans Schroedinger's papers.

[I'm ALL Right!]

If I believed I evolved from a monkey, which I don't, that would not necessarily prevent me from believing in a Creator. After all, the monkey didn't just appear.

IMO, the greatest evidence of a Creator is the vast world of creatures from amoebas to the most evolved mammals, the amazingly endless number and types of plant life...so much variety and creativity! Honestly, I am not trying to be combative. I'm just expressing that the more I learn about the world, the less likely it seems that it is all just random, and happened on its own. And though my theory is just as provable as yours, I don't think evolution must exclude Creation, or vice-versa.

[furball4paws]

But the 12th man is a strawman.

[js1138]

I'm not particularly thrilled by the idea of rooster-sized dinosaurs. My parents had an egg farm (free range) when I was a toddler, and the roosters attacked me at every opportunity. Think in terms of the early scene in Jurassic Park where the raptor's claw is demonstrated.

Spielberg's raptors were modeled after the behavior of fowl. I've seen those hunting techniques up close.