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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: Nebullis
His politics are completely opposite of the anarcho-libertarians. He has written that there must be big government control of property until the idea of private property "withers away." This is quite the opposite of both the anarchists (they want smaller government) and the libertarians (who support the concept of private property.)
Rothbard had a good article about Chompsky back in the 1960s. Chompsky seems more like a theoretical Stalinist without the loyalty to Mother Russia.
To: AndrewC
LOL!
Getting silly now you are.
To: Nebullis
The Lysenko comparison comes from the Chomskistas who controlled the linguistics departments during the 1960s to the 1990s. There was (is) a political correctness that makes what goes on now seem positively benign. There's a book about that but I forgot the name. I do remember that Chomsky dismissed all non-binary trees in any linguistic explanation.
To: balrog666
What's the site where JediGirl is hanging out?
To: Doctor Stochastic
Chompsky seems more like a theoretical Stalinist without the loyalty to Mother Russia.He's an anarchist. Technically, an anarcho-syndicalist.
To: Nebullis
not dependent on the political expediency of the day. Chomsky is a winner (Is there a life after structuralism? Post-structuralism?)
To: cornelis
All of Chomsky's books belong on that list. Have you read any of them? Yet, his ideas have significant value, even today. It's interesting that his hierachical view of language structure echos some of Wolfram's ideas about the world.
To: Nebullis
Technically, an anarcho-syndicalist.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer
for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from
the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of
government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic
ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at
me they'd put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! --- HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you hear that, eh?.... That's what I'm on about -- did you see
him repressing me, you saw it didn't you?
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528
posted on
10/04/2002 9:14:12 PM PDT
by
AndrewC
To: Nebullis
I read excerpts for a linguistics course. Patterns have a compelling hold on us all.
Here's an interesting site. Like Descarte's success in mathematics was insufficient for physics, Chomsky will need to be supplemented with a philosophy of personality. For this Levinas can be helpful. Levinas opposed the structuralists separation of language from the face and identity of the speaker.
To: Doctor Stochastic
There's a book about that but I forgot the name.Is it The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris?
Descartes'
To: cornelis
Chomsky will need to be supplemented with a philosophy of personality. The 'it', the unconscious.
To: Nebullis
Levinas goes to "the other." Chomsky thus falls in line with a long list of those who ever after Socrates and Plato sought the arche in the black box. Strauss, like Levinas, seeks it in the other, and of course his political philosophy greatly diverges from Chomsky.
To: cornelis
I can read Steven Pinker, by the way, who does a better job than Chomsky at explaining what Chomsky means.
And that would be Leo Strauss, not Claude Levi-Strauss (Chomsky's forerunner?)
To: PatrickHenry
Evolution teaches everything washed out of a mud ball!
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: VadeRetro
Next time, could you post the better stuff first? Didn't deal with this...at all!
To: All
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: All
No geologic column...no pre cambrian fossils---what's left?
Mutations...selection---very short limited time!
Not possible...evolution is going down---HARD/fast!
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