Scientist says ostrich study confirms bird 'hands' unlike those of dinosaurs

University of North Carolina News Services ^ | August 14, 2002 | DAVID WILLIAMSON

[forsnax5]

CHAPEL HILL -- To make an omelet, you need to break some eggs. Not nearly so well known is that breaking eggs also can lead to new information about the evolution of birds and dinosaurs, a topic of hot debate among leading biologists.

Drs. Alan Feduccia and Julie Nowicki of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have done just that. They opened a series of live ostrich eggs at various stages of development and found what they believe is proof that birds could not have descended from dinosaurs. They also discovered the first concrete evidence of a thumb in birds.

[drlevy88]

Haeckel's drawings are STILL appearing in modern science texts.

[drlevy88]

This is nice, but philosophically what does it prove?

[Nebullis]

This would seem to confirm that the embryos recapitulate evolutionary descent.

Some elements are conserved while others are lost. Recapitulation is based on the concept that each organism represents the sum of its phylogenetic history. We rather think that each organism represents the sum of its evolutionary history.

[Nebullis]

Let me clarify that. Haeckel's theory was based on the concept that each species on the phylogenetic tree represented terminal evolutionary additions to the previous species. Development was thought to recapitulate all the terminal additions.

[VadeRetro]

Oh, well! Sometimes the puzzle pieces don't all fit together the way we try to jam them in!