Fake fossil identified as a bird

nzherald ^

[chance33_98]

Fake fossil identified as a bird

21.11.2002

LONDON - A fossil once hailed as the missing link between dinosaurs and birds and later found to be a fake is mainly the remains of an extinct bird, scientists said on Wednesday (Thursday NZT).

When the 120 million-year-old Chinese fossil called Archaeoraptor was discovered in 1999, National Geographic magazine touted it as a major find that could settle the debate about whether birds evolved from dinosaurs.

But upon closer examination a panel of experts concluded the fossil was a composite consisting of the tail of a tiny dinosaur and bits of at least one other animal that had been cleverly glued together.

Zhou Zhonghe of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Julia Clarke of the American Museum of Natural History in New York have identified the other creature in the fossil as a fish-eating bird called Yanornis.

"We've presented the missing piece to the puzzle," Clarke told Reuters in an interview.

Rather than consisting of the remains of two or more species as some paleontologists had suspected, the mysterious bits of the forged fossil, other than the tail, are from one creature.

"Both of the included species are individually telling us important things about the evolution of birds," Clarke added.

Archeoraptor, thought to be the transitional creature between dinosaurs and birds, was about the size of a turkey with a pelvis and tail of a dinosaur and a bird-like head.

But after it was revealed to be a fake it became better known as the fossil that fooled the world, though not for long.

Scientists suspect the composite slab, which was found in the fossil-rich Liaoning province in northeast China, smuggled out of the country and sold to a private dinosaur museum in Utah, was pieced together by fossil hunters to increase its value.

A crack between the body and tail of the fossil raised suspicions about its authenticity. A panel of scientists examined the fossil and National Geographic issued a retraction in April 2000 after the tail portion was identified.

"The unfortunate aspect of the Archaeoraptor forgery was that it was used to suggest that other feathered dinosaur fossils from China were also fakes, which is not the case and simply served to add a layer of confusion to public understanding" said Clarke, whose research is reported in the science journal Nature.

She and Zhou compared detailed features and measurements of the bones from the Archaeoraptor composite slab with a known specimen of Yanornis. Except for the tail from the slab, which is from a small dinosaur known as Microraptor, the rest of the fake belongs to a single species.

"By identifying the other half of Archaeoraptor, we have new information about the study of Yanornis," Clarke said.

"Yanornis turns out to be a key new species for the study of the origins of all living birds."

[chance33_98]

Ping

[js1138]

This story is at least a year old and has prompted a dozen prior FR threads.

[js1138]

National Geographic issued a retraction in April 2000

Correction. Two and a half years old.

[eddie willers]

A crack between the body and tail of the fossil raised suspicions about its authenticity.

Well, D'uh!

[BenLurkin]

Science is NOT always on the side of

.

[webber]

If it took million upon million upon millions of years for animals to "evolve" to a higher form why isn't there evidence of these inter species missing links? There should be millions upon millions upon millions of skeletal remains of these interspecies "missing link". OR maybe there was no evolution that took place on Planet Earth. Maybe everything was CREATED! What a novel idea.

[eddie willers]

Science is NOT always on the side of [Truth}

Yes it is.
When it's not, that is called POLITICS.

[Saturnalia]

Yeah, it's not like SCIENTISTS found out that someone was pulling a fast one.
Those silly scientists, never figuring things out.

[chance33_98]

Fossil Strengthens Dinosaur-Bird Link
discovery online,reuters ^ | feb-14-2002 | reuters

And yet we have a thread from 2002 saying it was real...

[webber]

It goes to show you that evolutionists will go to any lengths to try to "prove" evolution is fact. Yeh, right, fact. That's why they have to fake all these missing links to prove it. Has anybody seen a, honest-to-goodness "REAL" skeleton of any missing link between any two different species in any museum dealing with prehistoric animals?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Science was on the side of truth here though. Enough scientists were suspicious to look at things a bit more closely.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The evolutionists were the ones who debunked the fake, not the ones who produced it.

[martin_fierro]

I have a sudden hankering for some Kentucky Fried Chickiebird.

[Dialup Llama]

Ha ha

[Texas_Jarhead]

what's your point? do you have some problem with the posting of this story dated 11/21/02? I hadn't heard about this before.

[js1138]

what's your point? do you have some problem with the posting of this story dated 11/21/02? I hadn't heard about this before.

The point is that the article itself says the fake was exposed almost three years ago. Not news.

[webber]

DUH!! You conveniently overlooked the whole point I was making. If there were actual physical proofs of "REAL" skeleton remain "fossilized" or not, they wouldn'g have to concoct a fake. But that's the way evolutionists try to avoid answering the question a try to make like you were telling us something really important, even though that was not the point I was making. The ultimate reason why evolutionists believe in evolution is because if everything was "Created", then they would be held accountable to that creator; to His law, to His commandments, to His statutes, to His covenants, to His definition of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and heresy. And that would just "Cramp" the evilutionists' lifestyle. And they don't want to stop living the way they are, which is in direct conflict with the teachings of the BIBLE.
THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Evolutionists didn't concoct the fakes, they exposed them.

[js1138]

Pearls before swine.