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4-Winged Dinosaur Fossil Found
Anonymous Coward writes "Scientists in China say they have found fossilized remains of a dinosaur with four feathered wings that it probably used for gliding, a find they say strengthens the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. See the story on CNN or BBC with a cool rendering of what it possibly looked like or at NYTimes (yadda)."
There was an excellent documentary on the BBC last summer that showed the elaborate lengths to which the Chinese fraud industry will go to fake a winged fossil.
The fraud detailed in the show fooled even National Geographic, which had spent thousands on research, documentation, and 'verification' by palaentologists.
I bet $20 this one turns out to be a fake.
davejenkins.com |
I'm holding out for a monkey with four asses.
I feel it coming: Jurassic Park 4: Attack of the microraptors, which will be followed by Jurassic Park 5: The return of the Mircoraptors where they'll be talking, which fortunately can be reproduced by the main figure by blowing on a bomboo horn.
No these people are wrong, look at Dolphins, clearly Dolphins have two "wings" at the front and two at the back on the tail. This is clearly correct and my total lack of knowledge or understanding of the subject should not get in the way of this being accepted as being the correct evolutionary move from dinos to not birds but mammals. We all know that birds evolved from insects as insects are what birds eats which means birds are cannibals. ... the worrying thing is how many people have read to this stage and thought "yeah, what do all those Chinese science guys know, how long have they been doing science? Wha d'yu mean they invented printing 2,000 years before the west... and gunpowder".
Slashdot, never let a lack of education get in the way of an opinion.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Cool wasn't exactly the first word that sprung into my mind when I saw it ;)
Fly over here, you bastards and get your reg-free link
Four winged freaks!
Speaking of microraptors, the bambiraptor is a cutesy-named microraptor.
One terrifying dinosaur... if you're a small cat, or a toy poodle.
Wow maybe that means dragon did walk the earth and we just haven't found the proof of it yet. I wouldn't be too surprised if they found some evidence of such, seems too consistant a fixture in stories to be 100% fiction. Sigh... Dinosaurs would have made great pets imho.
I guess that dinosaurs are also dragonfiles' ancestors, too :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
here is a link to the article in German from "Der Spiegel":
The article
where the chinese got all that obsessions with dragons. The article does not say, did it spit fire ?
The BBC has a story about an earlier chinese fake here or here for text browsers.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
None of the articles gave a name for this thing yet.
So, here we have it...
Slashdot's own Name that New Dinosaur Contest:
1. Glideasaurus
2. GNAB (GNAB's not a bird)
3. Quadrofoil
4. I don't have a name yet you Insensitive Clodasaurus.
5. Fakeoraptor
6. Cowboydactyl Nealasaurus.
BWC
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The UK is the most advanced country in the world, went through the Agricultural, Industrial and Communications revolutions first.
China still leads the world in many fields of science. Their micro-surgeons are acknowledged as the best, they have the most practice thanks to a total lack of safety in the average Chinese workplace. They have some of the finest maths brains on the planet, and there are 1.2 billion of them.
China is a scientific nation, you can't move at most scientific conferences without bumping into a large contingent who are either directly from China or who are researching in Western Unis.
Oh wait, you know are demonstrating how people who know jack shit about a subject and are never going to go to a scientific conference or get published in nature still think their opinions are valid even if based on a total lack of knowledge.
Sorry I nearly missed your wonderful example of irony.
Stem cell research in China one of 32 matches for Beijing university in natures publications. How many people from _your_ alma mater have been published in Nature ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Does it print dinosaur skin?
Okay, I'll byte. Once good AC deserves another, and I'm bored...
The key behind 'science' is the ability to test. You come up with a theory, and there will be some way, even if only hypothetically, that the theory can be proven wrong. A theory is not widely considered to be true until it is proven, but more theories can be based on it under the presumption that it is (sorta like read-ahead caching)
The key here is that it's always possible that it's wrong. This is called falsifiability. Something cannot be true unless it's possible to think of a way that is might be false. It sounds like a paradox, but the idea is that the theory will hold against any evidence brought against it, even when that evidence is thought to prove it wrong.
Religion is not falsifiable, unless you can give me a reasonable test that could prove God does not exist (and this prove the "theory" wrong)... which I assume is the root of your argument: That evolution is false because God created everything.
As for evolution being testable, some people are doing a great job of it. So far the theory has held up as expected.
And let's not forget the unintentional proofs, like antibiotic resistant bacteria
Just because your pet cat never give birth to a litter of dogs is not exactly reason to say evolution is bunk. Maybe if you understood the concept and the theory a little better you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.
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how do we know a dinosor didn't fall on two small birds and lay there for a few million years?
As others have suggested it may be a fake... I'd be inclined towards it being at least a genuine fossil (once bitten ;-) though the interpretation on it may be open to question.
There is a lot of interesting stuff comming out of China. It should be remembered that the famous National Geographic fake, actually contained two seperate significant fossils
I can understand the microraptor would've folded his front wings onto its chest or something , like normal birds do when they aren't flying. But if your feet act as wings as well then it cannot be comfortable walking around with those. What if they get muddy or wet ?
There are birdspecies nowadays with feathered legs and the feathers on them look all battered, muddy and broken, definitely unsuitable to fly around with.
It's just a man being attacked by 4 angry fish...
While the RIAA claims the dinosaur had four wings it actually had only ONE wing that it could wag around REALLY quickly.
Free as in mason.
Update: 6:30 AM, Scientists determine that the original analysis was erroneous and that it is, in fact, two separate winged dinosaurs on top of each other. This reassessment was prompted when archeological interns in the field discovered a fossilized truck with fossilized skid marks approximately 30 meters away.
Our current view of the fossils, with huge gaps between changes in the populations supports the idea of punctuated equalibrium. This gets the creationists excited, because they think that instant changes must come from a higher being. Thus, there has been tremendous pressure to find these transitonary species.
This pressure may cause scientists to misinterpet fossil records, or even create false fossils. I wouldn't become to excited about this find.
"You sir, have just crossed my happy line..."
No it's an early M$ marketing ploy. Xerox invented the GUI interface. But an early Chinese called Birr Gato planted the fake GUI in the hope it would give his descendants a monopoly in the future.
National Geographic has some good big pictures / illustrations of it.
What's so amazing about this?
Every time I go to KFC, I get the 4-winged chicken!
Ha ha haha aaaahh.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
The suggestion is that dinosaurs went through a gliding stage before learning to fly with two fore-limbs, says Dr Angela Milner of London's Natural History Museum.
This sort of quote assumes that evolution is going in a single direction -- "from" flightless dinos "to" modern birds. In fact traits commonly appear, and disappear, and reappear, many times. (Take a look at a "terror bird" and convince yourself birds weren't turning back into dinosaurs.)
It sounds like the world had a mess of different uses for feathers, once they developed -- insulatory, locomotion, display, and so on, just like in modern birds, and some we haven't thought of like this four-legged gliding model, if the fossil's real. Dinosaurs didn't develop "toward" flight, they bounced all over that range of feather uses just like birds do today.
Cladistics will air out that sort of thinking real fast. (Decent practical primer/pop science book: "In Search of Deep Time.")
Looking at things in "clades" also helps in practical ways by showing the evolutionary relationships between living animals more clearly. People trying to figure out ways to treat tapeworms had trouble making progress under the assumption that their on parasitism evolved only once, in a common anscestor of all modern tapeworms. Cladistics hashed out the evolutionary history of tapeworms a bit, and we realized the trait had a more patchy history -- parasitism had evolved several separate times -- and that some of the closest modern relations weren't parasitic at all. Those modern relations were easier to work with in the lab than something that required a host.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I can recommend reading some of Karl Popper's essays on falsifiabilty and the nature of science discovery.
Happy googleing.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
It can't be a link between birds and dinosaurs, because it's a fossil from the future! That animal planet show about speculating evolution (referenced in a slashdot article here) said that 4-winged birds are yet to come.
I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where they find a fossil of an angel. "The end is here. The end of high prices!"
Find a few more specimens and it will be easier to insert into our understanding of how the progression took place. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
-transiit
Aha! Now I see... This must be connected to the famous BillGatosaurus finding - A giant dinosaur that lured and devoured other dinosaurs if they had some uniqe evoloutionary feature. It is beleived that this creature damaged the dinosaurs possibilities to evolve and survive, and most likley contributed to their extinction.
I hear that there's a new shopping center opening in Springfield.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
How falsifiable is the theory of evolution?
For a good long time, mtDNA was considered an accurate dating method for finding common ancestors. It was even heralded as confirmation from a second dating method that the fossil record dates were accurate. But, then we learnt a little more and found out that mtDNA suggested we had an Out of Africa common mother(not the only woman ancestor, just our common mother) about 100,000 years ago. Which didn't fit our current interpretation of human fossil distribution, but it was in keeping with a less popular interpretation, so things were okay. Then we learnt a little more(Parsons in 1997) and found out that mtDNA mutations where around 20 times faster than we thought, placing our common ancestor around 6000 years old. Clearly wrong, so we essientially stopped claiming mtDNA evidence as support for evolution. And yet dates for mtDNA calibrated off expected evolutionary branches are still accepted as more accurate on evolutionary time scales, in spite of numerous studies confirming that observed mtDNA mutations within species are unexplicably higher than those between them. This anomaly is still being investigated, but evolutionists are confident it is nothing to worry about.
The evolution of whales is still a big issue for evolution. Claims from the fossil record were that whales came from Ambulocetus and this was accepted as a good enough answer. But molecular biology shows us that whales are actually more closely related to the hippopotamus. Now, although hippos share alot of morphological features with whales, they only appear in the fossil record 30 million years after whales. So these common morphological features must be the result of convergence, but evolutionists needn't worry.
Now, as much as evolution fits a lot of the evidence, there is also a good quantity of evidence that does not support evolution(above are merely 2 recent examples). Just how much counter evidence for evolution is required for it to be considered 'falsified'. At the very least there should some admission there are reasons to lack confidence in common descent. Note: By evolution I refer to common descent here, not genetic change over time(which is of course a demonstrable fact).
Well this'll cause a bit of a flap.....
C'mon!
Who modded the parent overrated? You get the obvious Springfield line but not this one? The one with the new mall in Springfield, Lisa's explanation for the angel. Anybody? Hello?
Birds have 2 sets of paired appendages. 2 wings and 2 feet. An extra set of paired appendages makes this organism very different form a bird. In addition dinosaurs also only had 2 sets of paired appendages so this thing probobly didn't evolve form a dinosaur either.
(Yeah, yeah, I know, bad joke, even by my standards, which weren't all that high to start with.)
There are still arguments as to whether -ANY- of the fossils with "feathers" found are genuine, whether the feathers are merely scales that fossilised, or whether (even if they were feathers) they were even used, and were merely a genetic anomoly that died out.
That's a lot of debate, and it's not going to be settled any time soon. Especially when finds are made in politically dubious times. (Don't pretend that all of the suspicion of the Chinese is due to the Chinese end of things. Other countries have a political stake in this.)
The main problem is that paleantology has become increasingly open to both fraud and cynics. As it is a science in which findings are very hard to verify (not everything fossilises, and not all areas are good for fossilization, making it very hard to duplicate results).
Another problem is scientists speaking outside their fields of expertise. Geologists have no business speculating on the nature of flight, with the SOLE exception of when they can produce a complete physical replica and can carry out hard science on that replica.
The nature of flight and wings is the sole preserve of specialists in aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. Unless people in these fields get involved, any guesswork by a geologist is of no greater significance than any Joe Blogg opinion. That it has the "respectability" of a degree or two attached makes it dangerous, because people will count the number of letters as an indication of truth, rather than whether the person has any clue of what they're talking about.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is this what they found? Is it just me or does this disturbing logo have a tiny pair of "hind wings"?
My former post was by no means intended as a troll. Furthermore, I can't see any objective reason it would be considered as such. I can understand people disagreeing with my statements but can anyone explain to my why the above was considered a troll?
Now you know what gave rise to all those dragon stories...
But any word on how many asses it has?
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
God cannot be disproved but religion certainly can.
Sooo.... you're saying I should probably stop trying to get my neighbors dog to fuck my cat?
I was really looking forward to having the first pupkitten on my block...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Simply show the historical evidence for the body of Jesus being found. He arose after the third day, and His body is nowhere to be found. Mohammed's is in a cave, Buddha's is in a known location, Joseph Smith's body is still a corpse, as are the last several "emanations" the Bahais believe in. If Christ just died, then all of Christianity would pop like a bubble. That was known in 32 A.D. after He arose, and it's been known ever since. Yet His body was never brought forth. That alone is not proof by any means, but it does provide a falsifiable test which has withstood nearly 2000 years. Name more than a handful of principles that have the same longetivity...
Antibiotic resistant bacteria almost always have lost genetic information, and the lack of a pathway makes them immune or resistant to the drug. This is not growing towards a new species nor is it adding functionality; it's a loss not a gain. And thanks, I understand it just fine. I just opened my eyes enough to ask the embarassing questions and realized that it's just as much bunk as Miss Cleo.
The link you gave to Stanford is a good example of knowing the conclusion before setting up the experiment. Instead of seeing if evolution is true, the stated goal of the experiment isThere is no room in their stated goal to even consider other explanations. They have made evolution a foundational assumption of their work.
Citing that as proof merely shows that those whose livelihood depends on propping up the status quo power structure (evolutionists) who control all the research money may have impinged upon how willing they would be to see counter evidence.
here's a pic of a frog with 6 legs
thank god for evolution!
A thing that amazes us, here in Europe, is the influence of creationists in the USA. Here in Europe, claiming to be creationnist and doubting every paleontologist discovery is view as mediaval backwardness. Only marginal religious sects, representing 0.1% of the population claim to be creationist. For us, contesting the evolution theory is like contesting the fact that le Earth is round and rotates around the Sun. The evolution debate is closed everywhere, expect in USA. How such a modern country can be so influenced by religious fondamentalist group ? That is the main reason of the growing gap across the Atlantic.
The evolution debate is closed everywhere, expect in USA.
I think your overstating things a bit here. Genetic change in populations over time has been closed for a long time. But any further details that evolution encompasses are still in quite active debate. Particularly phylogentic/caldistic analysis are still a hot topic. Fossil/morphology based trees are at odds with molecular based trees in several key locations. Mechanisms and models are also still under heavy debate, molecular evidence is still at odds with puncuated equilibrium. The mass of conflicting evidence and theories that evolution encompasses right now easily matches the amount of 'agreed upon' evidence and interpretations. To call this debate closed(even with regards to common descent), severly underestimates the complexity of our origins.
A 4 winged dinosaur...phhht...I have 3 legs. *cough* *cough*
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
There is no room in their stated goal to even consider other explanations. They have made evolution a foundational assumption of their work.
This is because we already KNOW evolution happens.
Put it this way: if you are doing experiments with airfoil shapes, the "assumtion" that planes can fly is taken for granted. If you are doing experiments with projectiles, the "assumption" that there is a force which pulls things toward the ground is taken for granted. And if you are doing experiments to see how strains of yeast change, the "assumption" that species evolve is taken for granted.
Actually I can observe planes flying and I can measure the pressure differential on an airfoil. I can also observe and measure the force of gravity. If you claim that "evolution" means that a population changes characteristics under a selection pressure, that only shows that there was a richness in their diversity to begin with. When the experiment is over, they are still yeast cells. So please, as requested in the previous post, when you get a chance define what you are including in your definition of evolution.