Posted on 10/01/2002 8:32:43 AM PDT by SteveH
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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]
Model of Sinosauropteryx sprima (pronounced 'sine-oh-saw-op-te-rix pree-ma')made by Alan Groves working with palaeontologists Drs Walter Boles and Sue Hand.
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."
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.
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.
"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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fiddle---faddle...
barker---placemarker!
I LOVE the new font! You must stick with this one. It's so...you!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.
He's a big fan of Castro -- got rid of prostitution, and all that. Except, of course, for those who are more equal.
That's why Chomsky would have this to say of Castro's regime:
"Personally, I'd like to see the regime ["it's a dictatorship, often brutal"] overthrown by an internal libertarian revolution..."
More fun from the "Half Dozen Immaculate Anarchists"
Are you an ID/IOT advocate as well?
Well STUPID, have a guess?
556 is 14 pin dual 555.
"The facts upon which evolution theory is based are rather well established. Mutations happen. They really do. And new species appear over time, really. And they appear in form and DNA to be related to pre-existing species. No joke, that's the evidence. In every generation, those best suited for the game of life are most likely to breed the next generation. Mutation and natural selection. And time, lots of time. They're the stuff of evolution."
"The results are always going to be seen as improbable in retrospect, but that's how things happen. It's such a reasonable explanation that there's no need to wave it all away and grasp instead for an external "designer" for whom there is no evidence at all.
"So I don't see ID as an "honest attempt" to deal with improbability. Rather, it's a clever attempt to confuse the poorly trained public with slick (but unscientific) patter."
353 posted on 9/19/02 2:24 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry
"Mutation and natural selection. And time, lots of time. They're the stuff of evolution."
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