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Living dinosaurs
abc.net.au ^
| 9/30/2002
Posted on 10/01/2002 8:32:43 AM PDT by 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]
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."
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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.
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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
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© ABC 2002 | privacy
TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: birds; crevolist; dinosaurs; evolution; paleontology
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To: VadeRetro
mainstream science...
is that what you see out the back of the primate island at the ZOO?
The maintank at the treatment plant---digester!
To: VadeRetro
Vade, I showed ‘YOUR’ arguments! And then you go back to your standard ‘creationist’ thing?
What are all these silly games?
You tell me…
To: VadeRetro
To: PatrickHenry
Except in the case of bacteria and insects, we can't personally observe it happening.
You constantly say that evolution is a fact, well where are the facts Patrick? Just a lot of double talk is what you give us. And no, even in bacteria and insects we have not seen evolution occurring. Show the experimental evidence for it. I am sure you will not. And no, assumptions are not facts, they are not even evidence.
409 posted on 9/29/02 9:29 PM Pacific by gore3000
To: VadeRetro
Geologic column---dating??
From the evolution textbook...
Why does it look like it does(grand canyon)?
"The reason that it looks the way does is due to the sequence in which the events that help to create it happened. 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. Fluctuations in climate then caused the oceans to move in over successive periods and each time a new rock layer was deposited. The rock layers were deposited one on top of the other and sometimes there were long periods in between in which some of the upper layers were eroded away, sometimes completely."
"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.
That is called science..."we already know"!
Campfire stories! Junk!!
Evolution...tall tales/legends---big lies(no comprehension)!
But the effect is permanent---zombie brains---religion/ideology---BIAS!
Govt school religion---'science'!
Bias means off the wall/page---outta reality...desire for something not true!
Evo cargo-go cult---ufo's!
To: Heartlander
I swear Heartlander it's the truth! I wish I could remember the thread. It was either an Evolution thread or an Astrophysics thread. Anyway the Creationists were questioning the age of the earth, saying it was only 6000 years old or something like that.
Physicist, Vade, and a bunch of others were throwing out facts about ages of rock, distances to the furthest galaxies, the time light takes to travel, etc.
One freeper, (can't remember the handle) claimed that indeed, creation and the universe are only 6000 years old, and that God created the universe the way we see it. (Presumably getting all the photons in place as well).
Using that logic how can we be sure we weren't created 8 days ago with memories put in place?
;)
I'll see if I can track down the thread.
Regards
To: SauronOfMordor
Check out "Old World Chamelions!"
To: Northeast
Seismology---tests...
can prove/disprove the age of mountains and the Earth...
or at least my theory about them!
Below the ground...there is a plate---DETECTABLE
that matches the perimeter of every mountain---range...
proving the mountain/hills(appalachia types/large openings)...
were formed from beneath---via the plate openings...
and resulted in triangular pointing up extruded masses with plate parts/residue on top.
The tops of the mountain/plateaus/buttes would match the original opening/crack in the plates!
The bottoms of the mountain would match where the plates stopped...
probably still touching!
To: Heartlander
Vade, I showed ‘YOUR’ arguments! You showed me what about them? Are you capable of standing back and looking at the kind of stuff you post when I present you with evidence? You degenerate to chanting "Blah! Blah! Blah!" and counting every time I said "could" or "tends" or "evidence." "Evidence" is the name of the game, by the way. "Proof" is for Geometry class.
You tell me…
Kind of a lame, "I know you are, but what am I?" comeback, isn't that? Nevertheless, I'll tell you what my story is in case you're really that slow. In these discussions, I tend to present evidence for common descent with modification as the origin of species (genera, families, etc).
You tend to screech and jabber "That's not it! Anything but that! Look how many ways I can confuse myself! Look how I can misunderstand! Look at how much I can ignore! Look how much I can forget, making you get out the same old weary articles and pictures over and over and over!"
Is it too much to ask why? Especially since you're now allegedly not a creationist? What's all this, then?
To: VadeRetro
Review by Richard Milton
When, a dozen years ago, I first published my view that Darwinism is scientifically flawed, I immediately encountered a kind of opponent who was to become very familiar to me over the next decade. I mean the kind who (quite sincerely) believes that anyone who challenges the conventional Darwinist view must be someone who is simply ignorant of the scientific facts. Such an opponent thus sets out to cure the ignorance he meets by the simple expedient of rehashing over and over again the tenets of the received wisdom, as found in the pages of Nature and Scientific American.
These guardians of Darwinian truth find it literally impossible to believe that anyone could actually have conducted some research and analysis that has led them to conclude rationally that Darwinism is scientifically flawed and think that -- like an Englishman abroad -- if only they shout a little louder, the dimwit foreigner might finally get the Darwinist message.
Michael Brass is such an upholder of the received wisdom on Darwinism, and his book, The Antiquity of Man, is just such a rehashing of that received wisdom. There is nothing new here. No new facts, no new scientific discoveries, not even a new interpretation or new analysis, merely the repetition of all the same old stuff that anyone who has ever spent time in a dentist's waiting room, leafing through old copies of National Geographic, is already thoroughly familiar with.
But in his book, Brass is not merely sounding off about anti-Darwinists in general -- he has some specific targets in his sights. From the outset he attacks scientific creationists for their views and he singles out the book 'Forbidden Archaeology' by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson.
As I'm not a creationist, and I don't have any religious beliefs, I don't intend to try to speak for Cremo, Thompson or anyone else, and I'm sure they are well able to look after themselves. But I am concerned, as a secular critic of the scientific content of Darwinism, that writers like Brass are getting away with obscuring the real scientific issues under the guise of 'debunking' what they pretend is merely 'creationist propaganda', a pretext that enables them to continue to dodge engaging in real scientific debate.
I've read Cremo and Thomson's book. I didn't find any religious propaganda or creationist messages, but I did find a mountain of carefully compiled scientific observations and reports that uniformly tend to undermine the conventional view that people like Brass hold so tightly and are unwilling even to debate openly and honestly. Certainly there are a few geological and palaeontological observations in Forbidden Archaeology that I found weak or questionable. That is hardly surprising since the book is 1000 pages long and contains thousands of references.
What a book like Forbidden Archaeology shows, in my view, is that if even a half (or even a tenth) of the objections raised by its authors are valid scientific objections, then Darwinism is a theory that is in deep, irremediable trouble. And the best that Brass can do in the way of rebuttal is to question a handful of their cases as unproven or badly chosen. His preferred method of rebuttal in almost all cases is that described earlier: he simply recites again, more loudly, the accepted Darwinist view.
We get an early glimpse of Brass's fundamentalist stance on the evidence claimed to support Darwinism such as dating of fossils. On page 38 he presents a table of two kinds of fossil dating. He labels the first as 'relative dating' and the second, radiometric dating by the potassium-argon method, he calls 'absolute dating'. Now, as his degrees are in history and archaeology, it is perfectly possible that Brass is completely unaware of the important scientific error he is making in describing radiometric dating of fossils as 'absolute' dating, and is merely taking it on trust from his physicist colleagues that his belief is correct -- as most scientists do. But the fact remains that the words 'absolute dating' can never be used in connection with the radiometric dating of fossils of any kind. (For background to dating fossils, see 'Shattering the myths of Darwinism' chapters 3, 4, and 5.)
To be fair, I should add that Brass is far from being the only professional scientist who is confused about this question. Most Darwinists are. Even Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in the museum's Guide to Evolution, first published in 1970, that the rocks forming the geological column and the fossils in them had been directly dated by radiometric methods -- a claim which is scientific nonsense and based solely on ignorance of the real facts.
In the same passage, Brass tries to make his claims for the potassium-argon method seem credible by pointing out that '0.01% of all natural potassium is radiopotassium.' To the uninitiated, this rarity must make the method seem special. But Brass forgets to mention that the substance this radioactive potassium turns into, the end product that is measured, is argon-40. Argon is the twelfth most abundant element on earth, and more than 99 per cent of it is argon-40. And there is no physical or chemical way to tell whether a given sample of argon-40 is the residue of radioactive potassium or was present in the rocks when they formed.
There are many other places where Brass shows he has swallowed Darwinist urban scientific myths hook, line and sinker. On the very first page of his introduction he repeats the commonly-made claim that Darwinian evolution is supported by observed speciation, when the true scientific facts are that there is not a single real case of observed Darwinian speciation (the cases listed in the talk-origin "FAQ" being entirely bogus [more information available here]).
Whenever he encounters scientific evidence that he is unable to rebut, Brass appeals to authorities who, in his mind, are so grand as to be unimpeachable. Yet these 'authorities' and their words often turn out on closer inspection to have no more substance than Brass himself.
For example, the work of zoologist Solly Zuckermann, has long been a thorn in the side of Darwinists because Zuckermann conducted a study which concluded that Australopithecines (like 'Lucy') were predominantly ape-like and not human-like creatures and thus not ancestral to humans. Brass dismisses the work of Zuckermann, one of Britain's most distinguished zoologists, by reference to a quote from Jim Foley. Who is Jim Foley? He is the author of the talk-origins "FAQ" on human origins, which is as badly-researched and bogus as the rest of the talk-origins "FAQs" [more information available here].
In writing this book, Michael Brass has put on his arms and armour, chosen a cause about which he feels passionately, selected a battleground and engaged those he perceives as the enemies of science. Unfortunately, his armour doesn't fit him, his weapons are blunt, his passionate cause is already lost and, worst of all, he has chosen the wrong battle. For instead of attacking the real enemies of science -- the brain-dead pedlars of urban scientific myths -- he is attacking the few people who are making an honest attempt to question a theory that is long past its sell-by date.
This book is designed to bring aid and comfort to the excrement-hurling howler monkeys that infest Internet groups such as talk-origins, by reaffirming once more the oft-told Darwinist tale of human origins. It does not advance the cause of scientific investigation nor, despite its title, does it shed any light on the antiquity of mankind.
Richard Milton is the author of Shattering the Myths of Darwinism and 'Alternative Science'.
To: All
I'm warming up for the archaeologist...gonna wager everything---the whole farm on one bet!
Prove the age---composition of the earth---no possible ties!
How and why mountains were formed---THE PROOF/prediction!
To: All
Raised valleys stuck between mountains would have natural filling and resevoirs below them holding/trapping---water/gas/oil...ect.
A valley would be a central plate floor caught/floating/lifted from the mountains rising...
much higher than submerged plates around the mountains perimeter!
and canyons(small openings)...inverted mountains---the same way!
I am not talking about Himalaya/rocky type mountains whose origins are different...
but this whole evolution idea of erosion---sedimentary levels is bogus!
Post cambrian levels can also be explained by volcanic and flood layering that doesn't take billions of years to complete!
There is a plate---
that matches the perimeter
that is detectable that matches the slopes of all these mountain/hills!
There are always exceptions to the overall theory but basically earth topography is pretty much redundant/same!
Valleys plate tops...mountains/hills/canyons plate openings!
To: f.Christian
Presto...
Valley floors...plate tops---
mountains/hills/canyons...plate side--openings/cracks!
To: Junior
placemarker -- You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
393
posted on
10/03/2002 6:53:15 PM PDT
by
Junior
To: Junior
Evolution version...
mudball planet water washed out features---mountains/valleys---people...animals too!
To: Heartlander
You tell me… Look at your response above. You went to a passage where I defended Anomalocaris as evidence for arthropods arising from worms, text in which I cited anatomical features linking both groups. I further cited the similarity of hatchling insects (arthropods) to lobopod worms. You should--but where's the evidence that you do?--recall that such is part of a larger pattern of frogs/fish, lampreys/cephalochordates, and your own horseshoe crabs/trilobites.
You dismissed without evidence the inter-phylum connection thus represented as imaginary. (". . . The imaginary ‘dotted’ lines being drawn by Darwinists.") Then you bolded several words in my text to show I wasn't making pronouncements in Biblical authoritarian terms. I was explaining a line of reasoning from evidence, after all.
Why am I doing what I'm doing? I was appalled some three years ago to see so many of my philosophical and political brethren attacking science. Conservatism can never speak to the country with such hayseed Luddites dragging about its ankles, so I initially set about to add my voice to those offsetting any likely harmful effect of the clamor of creationists on FR. It turned out to be fun and educational.
I've forestalled the turnaround question, so tell me why you're doing this improbable lawyer's stall game against overwhelming evidence.
To: VadeRetro
You showed me what about them? Are you capable of standing back and looking at the kind of stuff you post when I present you with evidence? You degenerate to chanting "Blah! Blah! Blah!" and counting every time I said "could" or "tends" or "evidence." "Evidence" is the name of the game, by the way. "Proof" is for Geometry class. Dotted lines and assumptions, this is what I was pointing out to you. You’re allowed to infer and your data is the only data that is correct. Do you see ‘this’? You claim proof all the time…
You tend to screech and jabber "That's not it! Anything but that! Look how many ways I can confuse myself! Look how I can misunderstand! Look at how much I can ignore! Look how much I can forget, making you get out the same old weary articles and pictures over and over and over!"
Projection Vade… can you say the word with me PROJECTION.
Is it too much to ask why? Especially since you're now allegedly not a creationist? What's all this, then?
We have been through this many times. I do not subscribe to YEC or evolution but this is based on what I consider dogma on both sides.
Kind of a lame, "I know you are, but what am I?" comeback, isn't that? Nevertheless, I'll tell you what my story is in case you're really that slow. In these discussions, I tend to present evidence for common descent with modification as the origin of species (genera, families, etc).
No Vade, you say to everyone “this is what to believe and if you don’t, well, you’re an idiot”. If the evidence were convincing to me that evolution is true, it would not bother me or change my life at all. Science is merely a hobby for me…
If the evidence convinced you that evolution (or the theory of common descent) was false, would your life change?
To: VadeRetro
Conservatism can never speak to the country with such hayseed Luddites dragging about its ankles, ...just came from an evo rally?
To: Heartlander
And then you go back to your standard ‘creationist’ thing? You have claimed, depending upon what "is" is, not to be a creationist. Why are you doing this? Why do you post creationist literature torturing fact and logic?
To: VadeRetro
What is a Creationist to Vade?
To: f.Christian; Admin Moderator
This same exact spam essay has been posted several times before by this person. Here are a few places where it can be found:
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=760756,389
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/760666/posts?page=67#67
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/756394/posts?page=30#30
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/755763/posts?page=99#99
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