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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 |
Speaking of microraptors, the bambiraptor is a cutesy-named microraptor.
One terrifying dinosaur... if you're a small cat, or a toy poodle.
Evolution tends to follow similar paths in similar situations.
The article suggests that the Microraptors might have 'flown' like flying squirrels do. Since the squirrels have no problems getting around, I guess the 'raptors had no trouble.
Mammals have developed two forms of flight - the modified hand as a wing in Bats and the three flaps of skin between limbs used by some Squirrels.
It stands to reason to assume that if Birds today use the modified hand method, that there might have been some other dinosaur subspecies that used the other method.
Insert witty sig about inserting witty sig here, here.
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..."
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.
The general theory of evolution will remain until sufficient counter-evidence is found to discredit it. Thus far, the "good quantity" of counter-evidence you refer to is minor compared to the weight of evidence supporting evolution. Until a new theory is found that describes both your counter-evidence and the evidence for evolution, the theory of evolution will remain.
You need desperately to stop reading Feduccia and believing everything he says as undeniable truth. The guy does piss-poor paleontology (ask any paleontologist and they'll tell you the same thing). He doesn't even publish in peer-reviewed papers...he writes books which are NOT peer reviewed. As far as I'm concerned, HE'S the fraud.
But about the feathered dinosaurs. The whole "scales or connective tissue" argument is long-dead. That argument was used against Sinosauropteryx because the only feathers it had was a small amount of "dinofuzz." Dinofuzz has not been proven to be feathers, but it seems likely that it is indeed protofeathers. Since Sinosauropteryx, however, we've found MANY more feathered dinosaurs, many of which indeed have true feathers. Some of these have been found by paleontologists as opposed to villiagers and are therefore unaltered. Microscopic analysis of the feathers shows a LOT of detail in structures that we find in the feathers found in, say, Confucisornis and other birds found in the Liaoning beds.
The infamous Archaeoraptor debacle was NOT as big a problem as you would think. There were two seperate animals stuck together...a composite specimen made up of a bird and a Microraptor. The guy who found it AT A ROCK AND GEM SHOW(who was NOT, I repeat, NOT a paleontologist but rather a dinosaur fanatic who wanted his name on a paper) took it straight to National Geographic and had all sorts of stuff done with it LONG before the whole thing was even looked at in more detail. This was a result of bad science, not the convincing value of the composites/fakes coming out of China.
No offense or anything, but you, sir, are an ignorant fool. Most paleontologists are NOT trained primarily in geology. Many have specialized in comparative anatomy, developmental biology, and other areas that are more important to understanding the morphology of the animals they study. I've even met a few paleontologists who DO have a good background in aerodynamics or structural engineering so they can understand what the animals they're looking at could and could not do. Don't think all paleontologists are geologists who pick up fossils, name them, and make up unfounded stories as to the animal's behavior.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
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?
here's a pic of a frog with 6 legs
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.