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Move Over, Archaeopteryx
Reedo writes "The clearest evidence ever of the missing link between dinosaurs and birds has been found in a newly discovered "feathered" fossil in northeastern China, claim scientists. The specimen was found embedded in a large slab of rock, in what scientists think was a former lake or pond."
http://www.dinosaur.org/news/news01-04-25bird.html
Plus it has links to some really high res pics. I can't see where that ugly pic on the CNN site fits in, but this is the same bird/dino. A quick search on Google revealed that most of the other sites covering this showed the pictures from the above link, but at lower resolution.
c-hack.com |
Natural selection is a predicative theory.
It predicts that the "fittest" individuals (whether
those individuals are considered to be genes,
organisms, or whatever your model uses) will tend
to survive in a competitive environment, at the
expense of less fit individuals. Evolution follows
as a result of this differential survival rate when
reproduction is a factor.
As a direct example, John Holland's schema theory
predicts that the number of schema S in a population
at time t + 1 equals a function of it's number at
time t multiplied by it's relative fitness and
survivability under crossover and mutation.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
Note that in the talkorigins reference you gave there is no mention of the studies in coal-ified wood
You should have looked through talk origins more carefully. This is a link to this page on coalified wood.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
There is a missing link. Up until this point, the only fossil that linked birds to dinosaurs was Archaeopteryx. Ornithologists and paleontologists have been hoping they would find some other fossil to help prove their theory. It goes without showing that this fossil will help them. Just because there may not be a fossil doesn't mean that it didn't exist. Unfortunately fossils are the only way to prove evolution (at least that far back in time).
What does evolution being a punctuated equilibrium have to do with any of this? The article says that they found another possible link between birds and dinosaurs, one that might prove the theory better than Archaeopteryx has. They are gradually unfolding the truth. Punctuated equilibrium is the way that evolution occurs, and it's still only one theory.
please me, have no regrets.