Dinosaur With Mature Feathers Uncovered in China

AP via Fox News ^ | 3/6/2002

[CholeraJoe]

Paleontologists working in China say they have unearthed the first fossil of a dinosaur that appeared to have mature feathers identical to those of modern birds, including long, showy plumage on its tail and hind legs.

The U.S.-Chinese research team said the 3-foot fossil should settle once and for all the debate over whether birds and dinosaurs are related.

[CholeraJoe]

20 foot tall drumsticks... mmmmmm.

I went to a buffet where they served "Steamship Round Jurassic." It was a whole ostrich drumstick slow roasted. DEEEElicous.

[Lurking Libertarian]

All cultures have dragon legends. I don't know a single one that doesn't include the concept of a dragon somewhere.

Probably because they found dinosaur bones.

[Redcloak]

Fossils as the source for dragon stories makes sense only if all of these cultures are finding specimens that are largely intact. A few, large, bone-shaped rocks scattered about the countryside aren't likely to inspire such a universal image.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Finding a skull would do, as would finding any sizeable chunk (rib cage, tail, etc.) of a dino bigger than anything known to the finders. But I admit I'm speculating.

[txhurl]

mmmm man I'm getting hungry....

[sixgunjer]

Joan Rivers in a Big Bird suit?

[Dengar01]

LOL

[jennyp]

Here's Reuter's version, via Yahoo...

---

Dinosaur Shows Feathers Not for Flight
Wed Mar 6, 3:30 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese and American scientists have unearthed a fossil of a small, feathered, flightless dinosaur in northern China which they say is definitive proof that feathers originated before birds or flight.

They found the feathered creature, which was slightly bigger than a pheasant and dubbed BPM 1 3-13, in China's Liaoning Province, an area rich in fossils dating back at least 125 million years.

"This is a significant chunk adding to the greater body of all the evidence we have, which I think by any standard of doubt is definitive that feathers aren't for flight, that non-avian dinosaurs had feathers and that birds are a kind of dinosaur," Mark Norell, of New York's American Museum of Natural History, said in an interview.

Norell and scientists from the Chinese Academy of Geological Science in Beijing reported their finding in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.

They said the feathers covered the creature, a dromaeosaur -- a small, fast running two-legged predator which scientists believe shares a close common ancestor with birds.

Paleontologists have found evidence of fluff or fuzz on other ancient creatures but this is the first evidence of feathers in a dromaeosaur, thought to be one of the closest relatives of birds.

Scientists have been divided over whether birds evolved from dinosaurs or independently from some earlier, yet undiscovered reptile, but Norell thinks the latest finding may resolve any lingering doubt because the feathers of BPM 1 3-13 are structurally identical to those of modern birds.

"The presence of modern feathers on this new dromaeosaur shows definitively that they evolved in dinosaurs before the emergence of birds and flight, and that therefore feathers are not an adaptation for flight," Norell explained.

Dromaeosaurs belong to a group of dinosaurs called theropods which share about 100 anatomical features, including a wishbone, swiveling wrists and three forward-pointing toes, with birds.

Norell said the downy primitive feathers of Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird which lived 150 million years ago, and the feathers of BPM 1 3-13 probably have a common evolutionary origin.

[jennyp]

A dinosaur could easily have had feathers for insulation, but not flight feathers. Gigantic difference; the one could not plausibly evolve from the other. The evidence appears to indicate, however, that the one might have been re-engineered from the other.

<cough> <snort> ahem, could not plausibly evolve, but could have been re-engineered??? Hoo boy, that's a keeper.

[VadeRetro]

"Downy primitive feathers on Archaeopteryx?" Is Norell looking at the right specimens?

[jennyp]

But a flight feather is a major engineering advance which could not plausibly evolve from hair or insulation feathers. It has complex structure, interlocking barbules etc., and a complex system for allowing it to be turned so that the flight feathers open like a venetian blind on upstrokes and then close again on downstrokes, and without all of that, the whole thing is useless.

That's all very nice. But the articles say these latest feathers are "mature". I assume this means they have a central shaft with filaments coming off it at intervals. Who should we believe, then? Your excluded-middle theories for why it should be impossible, or our lyin' eyes?

[blam]

Thanks. I'm a believer.

[jennyp]

I knew something about that statement didn't feel right! Maybe he meant Confuciousauris[sp] or Sinosaur...[sp]. Ahh, you're the one with all the cool references.

[jennyp]

The article hasn't hit the Nature site yet. I hope they release a photo when it does. (Ugh, they'll probably make it a subscription-only access.)

[medved]

You can cough and snort all you want, but a flight feather is an engineering work which is never going to evolve from hair or down feathers.

Consider the "proto-bird" (TM), a favorite amongst evolutionists.

This poor little creature is supposed to have somehow survived a thousand generation process during which it had neither functional arms, nor functional wings, during which it had enough flight feathers to look weird and be laughed at, but not enough to fly, a light enough bone structure to be kicked around on beaches, but not light enough to fly, and was generally an outcast, pariah, ugly duckling, and effortlessly free meal for every predator which ever saw it for 1000+ generations before it ever succeeded and flew.

An idea of how hard it would truly be for "proto-bird" (TM) to make it to flying-bird status can be gotten from the case of the escaped chicken.

Consider that man raises chickens in gigantic abundance, and that on many farms, these are not even caged. Consider the numbers of such chickens which must have escaped in all of recorded history; look in the sky overhead: where are all of their wild-living descendants??

Why are there no wild chickens in the skies above us???

A flying bird requires a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including flight feathers, wings, a special light bone structure, specialized flow-through design hearts and lungs vastly more efficient than ours, specialized tails and balance parameters, and a number of other things. Now, you can imagine the difficulty involved for something like a dinosaur which did not have any of these things to evolve them all, but the feral chicken

already has all of these things!!!!!

In other words, if there's any chance whatsoever of a non-flying creature evolving into a flying bird, then surely, surely the feral chicken, close as it is, could RE-EVOLVE back into being a flying bird. They're only missing the tiniest fraction of whatever is involved.

They've got wings, tails, and flight feathers, and the whold nine yards. In their domestic state, they can fly albeit badly; they are entirely similar to what you might expect of an evolutionist's proto-bird, in the final stage of evolving into a flight-worthy condition.

According to evolutionist dogma, at least a few of these should very quickly finish evolving back into something like a normal flying bird, once having escaped, and then the progeny of those few should very quickly fill the skies.

But the sky holds no wild chickens. In real life, against real settings, real predators, real conditions, the imperfect flight features do not suffice to save them.

Thus we see that "proto-bird" (TM) not only couldn't make it the entire journey which he is supposed to have, he couldn't even make it the last yard if we spotted him the thousand miles minus the yard.

The basic question is: How in hell is some velociraptor supposed to make it the thousand miles, if history proves that a creature which amounts to the final stage of such a development cannot make it the final yard of such a process?

[VadeRetro]

(Perry Como voce)

Spam along with me,
I'm on my way to a star Saturn . . .

[Nebullis]

The article is there. And the feathers look quite feather-like to my untrained eyes.

[Nebullis]

In Nature (public access for news bit): Earliest life or rare dirt?

[jennyp]

The article is there. And the feathers look quite feather-like to my untrained eyes.

Is it free? (Or if not, could you post a link to the picture please pretty please?)

[jennyp]

But your argument boils down to this: Each structure (feathers in this case) must be perfect or they'll be completely useless. That is clearly wrong.