[CholeraJoe]

More fodder for the Evolution vs. Creation debate.

[Harrison Bergeron]

Amelia: Harold, STOP IT! Those were my best pillows...Quit playing with that dog. Oh, you idiot, those were my mother's feathers!

Harold: I didn't know your mother had feathers.

From It's a Gift, starring W. C. Fields

[ColdSteelTalon]

Well well well, science again contradicts itself. What's new? I was told in biology as other students for generations before me that Dinosaurs were cold blooded reptiles. If I had said then that they actually are more like chickens, then they would have sent me to the office to see the princpal for being obtuse.

Just can't trust what science says...

[RightWhale]

Isn't this the story from a couple years ago? The Chinese farmer with some hoax time on his hands?

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

"I would want to be very certain that the fossil has not been deliberately salted with feathers from some other source."

So would I. Wouldn't you?

[patriot_wes]

This wasn't funny Joe. I came over to check this out thinking there was a Hillary joke in here somewhere.
This is just about dinasaurs!

[RickGee]

False alarm. Somebody was watching the dinosaurs on NBC and got confused.

[elephantlips]

Early road runner

[Khepry]

So let me get this, the Birds of Pardise really were dinosaurs with feathers and angels do have wings, only they are really dinosaurs with with wings? Godzilla movies will need to be remade to show the plumage. Juraisic Park was a terrible result of genetic engineering that created a false memory model of monsters - something like the preschool-sex scandals of the 80's may have produced false memories in children. Zacheriah Sitchin's obsession with early Mesopotamian iconography and lost advanced civilizations will be modified from space invaders to theories of ADD (advanced dinosaur development) who left the earth for space after they had created man. Think of the boom of all the children's books that will become obsolete and PBS shows that will have be remade. Of course the Chinese have always had traditions of flying dragons, but even their images will have to be scaled back at little bit.

[VikingsRazeAVillage]

"They tell us that we lost our tails......evolving up from little snails. I say it's all, just 'wind in sails'.

Are we not men?

We are DEVO!!!" -------- sorry, I couldn't resist....

[Have Ruck - Will Travel]

Yes, yes, yes, but... Did it TASTE like chicken?

What is the best reason for bringing back the dinosaurs by cloning??? 20 foot tall drumsticks... mmmmmm.

[sixgunjer]

Joan Rivers in a Big Bird suit?

[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.