Slashdot Mirror
Dinosaur Forces Rethink Of Flight's Evolution
gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that a small dinosaur with a long, slender snout and wing-like limbs is forcing a rethink on bird evolution." From the article: "The 90 million-year-old reptile, called Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, belongs to the same sickle-clawed group of dinosaurs as Velociraptor and feathered dinosaurs from China. It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice. One theory suggests the lineage of dinosaurs the new animal belonged to, the dromaeosaurs, originated in the Cretaceous Period (144 to 65 million years ago). But this discovery suggests their lineage can be traced further back in time, to the Jurassic (206 to 144 million years ago), experts say."
Dinosaurs rumored to have had superior grammar skills when compared to slashdot editors!
Monstar L
"small dinosaur with a long, slender snout and wing-like limbs"
... who said pigs couldn't fly?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Does this mean that the chicken in the freezer is even older than the package says? ;-)
Geek Hillbilly
And /me already thought they've finally found that dude from Dragonheart 2.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Don't we already have two different types of powered flights? Birds, and Insects?
geek page at KY speaks
This might explain why emus are only found in Australia, which became separated from Gondwana.
End transmission.
Since this comes up in every slashdot story on dinosaurs, no, Jurassic Park is not possible -
Fossilization occurs when carbon atoms are exchanged for silicon. There is a very high energy barrier to this chemical event - so it happens extremely slowly, over millions of years.
Nucleic acids, the building blocks of DNA, spontaneously decay (even in the absence of bacteria or degrading agents). The spontaneous decay of DNA is very slow by most standards - if kept under the proper conditions a DNA molecule can last for millennia. However, this spontaneous decay is a great deal faster than the exchange of carbon and silicon, especially when you consider that the carbon and silicon must exchange over the surface area of the sample (for example a bone several inches thick fossilizes very slowly from the outside in,) while the DNA is decaying continuously in the marrow. So, for a fossil millions of years old, even if you managed to recover something that looked like a nucleic acid base, it would be decayed to the point that the information content is completely gone.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
We just need to accept that they aren't "terrible lizards" but "terror birds," and change the name from dinosaurs to dinoaves. The name has already been changed from 'dragons', so I think we can manage this.
Which came first, the chicken or the dromeaosaur?
And flight has three other instances, if you don't count flying squirrels and gliding snakes: both major kinds of bats, and the monotreme ptero"saurs" - they were warm-blooded furry and laid eggs. That is a monotreme, like the spiny echidna and duck-bill platypus.
birds, bats, insects, spaghetti monsters....yup!
Any ideas what THIS dinosaur is?
You have got to see the size of this thing, possibly hundreds of feet long, and it might have wings as well, or fins and was a sea creature. They dont know how to classify it.
See: http://www.farshores.org/a05verte.htm
It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.
As I recall, powered flight has evolved independantly a number of times.
Insects
Birds
Pterosaurs
Bats
and if I not mistaken, fruit bats evolved flight separately to insect-eating "true" bats. That's at least four if not five times.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
You too can be a part of the HARASS SLASHDOT campaign! Simply take any of the "editor" email addresses (for example, moderation@slashdot.org), and any website you visit that has a "submit email address for newsletter" sign an editor up! IT'S THAT SIMPLE!
I guess it really is chicken of the sea.
If you read the bible as porn literature, the versus that contradict each other in the teachings of the pastors,etc. are brought to light, as when read as porn lit, they don't contradict.
One example is laying with beasts:
"If a man lays with a beast, he shall surely die!!"
Taken in a sexual context, this must be as ecstasy, or heavenly.Sayings such as, "He has a bod to die for!!" is one modern example.
Re-read the bible folks, take special note of the psalms and of the story of abraham.Also, the story of Onan is rather interesting.Why do christians leave those bits out of their beliefs?
Maybe it's because they aren't christians, but are really agents of the devil, since they seem pre-occupied with material things on earth and not for the well being of others but themselves.Very very selfish.
Yeah, but that's just what He wants you to think.
There are some enlightened among us who know the truth, that He created all of it with His Noodly Appendage
we all know that there is no such thing as evolution... only intelligent design. idiots!
It goes back 5,000 years, tops.
Regards,
G. Bush
make a few throw away prototypes before marketing the real thing. Fooey to all those 'evolutionists' and their 'science', I say!
It's just God messing with our heads.
Didn't you read that bit in the bible? In Genesis? In that footnote 4 or 5 pages in?
"And the Lord brought forth the remains of many, many varied animals and plants, different to what existed on the newly-fashioned earth. And lo, He crafted a fossil record that suggested they did indeed exist far in the past, and planted it so that men of Science, with their need to understand with Hard Facts and Reason and Logic, would have something to explain the Creation with. For the Lord looks after all His children, even those of little Faith."
It's all in there people. You just have to read and interpret it a little bit.
And change a few words here and there. And possibly fragment and rearrage sections. But it's all in there.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
They count as flight de-evolution! (and possibly chickens...)
>It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.
Either that, or evidence that the theory of evolution is falling apart at the seams.
As previously discussed the statement of 'tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice' is a ridiculous assertion given the different flying mechanisms used by various creatures: including animals which merely glide through to insects which rapidly move their wings to fly. From the article: 'The authors say the discovery Rahonavis and Buitreraptor have long and wing-like forelimbs could imply that flight evolved twice, once in birds and once among this group of Gondwanan dromaeosaurs.' I guess since I have long reasonably thin arms I will be flying one day too? Come on this article had no real substance, only hype and even then it was wrong. This article was mere storytelling not the real science that might be asserted.
...buritoraptor.
Insects, much much earlier, gliding flight in reptiles, gliding flight in mammals, powered flight in birds, powered flight in reptiles, powered flight in mammals.
In mammals and reptiles
Passive flight
a. Gliding
b. Parachuting;
Soaring
Powered flight
Bugs
The first animals to take to the air under control.
Carboniferous
The only flying creatures that evolved flapping flight without sacrificing limbs to form the wings.
Parachuting can evolve in animals with rather low metabolic rates.
It does not require the high metabolic rate of birds and bats, which have powered flight.
Late Permian reptile Coelurosauravus
Bones jointed for folding
No gliding lepidosaur is known from the fossil record after the Triassic, so the living lizard Draco which also uses elongated ribs to support an airfoil, must represent yet another independent evolution of gliding
Flamebait? Sheesh.
He provided a link to the back story, it had a smiley...who are you people?
Its not like he farted in church or anything.
This is slashdot, the home of stupid in-jokes, and I expect a better reception.
Dinosaur forces rethink of flight's evolution. So now the dinosaur's are fighting evolution too! And they're even being forceful about it! Now that the fundies have convinced the dinosaurs that evolution is false and to take up arms against us how can we possibly win!
hey! just because it's some crackpot website with nothing but mosquito's and motion blur dos'nt mean they should not get a mention!.
That article is horrible, and the posting is also not so good. Here's a link to the press release from the Field Museum in Chicago, where one of the co-authors of the Nature article works:s _sinovenator.htm
o ct13,0,1942769.story?coll=ny-leadhealthnews-headli nes
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/museum_info/press/pres
And here's a link to a non-subscription site that's carrying the Chicago Tribune's article, which a lot of outlets seem to be carrying because it compares the dinosaur to Sesame Street's Big Bird:
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/chi-0510130118
Both articles said that buitreraptor probably could not fly.
Evolution is nothing but a theory, just as is gravity. Theory means "not true". The real basis for flight is God's divine will expressed through specific cases where He suspends Intelligent Falling. Flight is one of the most clear examples that proves Intelligent Falling, and that the "theory" of gravity is just bunk foisted on us by a bunch of scientists who want to destroy God.
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What you've said implies that it's not impossible, just really, really difficult, and extremely unlikely, but you haven't made the case that it's "not possible".
They've found fossils with traces of blood, skin, flesh and feathers.
In terms of half-life, there's got to be some "dino-dna" around somewhere right now. At least, given a large enough mass of extant dinosaur remains.
The real question is just how much raw dino-mass it will take before any usable DNA can be expected to be found. Perhaps it would take many times more mass than that of every dinosaur that ever lived, but perhaps it's small enough that it's probable that in some museum somewhere is a realistically findable and usable strand of DNA.
I most certainly do not know the answer to that, but I'm not convinced you do either, and I suspect are just promoting as fact something that is more a belief on your part without any serious calculation to back it up.
...is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
So the burning question is... did this thing miss?
The movie also used DNA from insects tapped in amber. ...or is the capital A in Amber because they found bugs in some girl named Amber? ;)
That guy's dead. And before that he was a paraplegic.
Hmm, I was sure we had debunked this whole "evolution" fad thoroughly already? I mean, why would God make all those creationists say that evolution is wrong if evolution actually is correct? That just wouldn't happen. Wake up, people!
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
When did the dinosaurs develop a military, and what happened the first time they thought about the evolution of flight?
One massive problem with the theory of birds evolving from dinosaurs is the date for birds keeps going backward and very early feathered reptiles have been found. The solution seems obvious. Birds, Mammals and dinosaurs evolved at roughly the same time. The mammals of the time were more reptile like but so were the birds. If birds came from dinosaurs birds should have evolved at the end of the Cretaceous not at the begining of the Triassic as the earliest bird accestors seem to show up. The similarities appear to be more from a common ancestor and parallel development.
a distant relation of bigfootsuitus, in my erstwhile opinion...
He has a point. Superman DIDN'T evolve on this planet. Why's he modded funny?
shut up, you stupid faggot
The article has two geographic errors: first, it was found in Rio Negro province, not Neuquén.
Also, the article is misleading when saying "found in Central Argentina" Neuquén and Río Negro are provinces in Patagonia, which is South enough to be considered Southern Argentina.
One more thing in jurassic park was the fact that, they were only producing (if i may use tht word) male dinosaurs, so that they could have a control over it. However, as is found out, they inherit a property from another species (thing it was some frog), whose blood might have been used as a filler, and which had a property that, reproduction was still possible,and hence the dinosaurs eventually started laying eggs on their own.
Why would a creature without wings 'think' it could survive better with wings and push itselfs to grow some very complex attributes to its body?
The matter is, how flight works a.k.a. avionics is very complex. Ok, the human thought it could fly and now it can. But only by study and intelligence together. Other creatures (or should I say "evolutures"?) didn't had the intelligence nor the chance to study. So how would they know what to grow to be able to fly?
Another thing with fossiles is the carbon dating method. It is based on assumptions. Science based on assumptions is unstable science. Since it is proven that penguins living for ca. 30 years are dated 3500+ years with the same kind of carbon dating they use on fossils. Other examples besides the penguins are being available where it is clear carbon dating is not accurate, least to say not usable enough to use over and over again to proove something.
There are thousands of places on earth wich (for evolutionists) contain mysterious combinations of fossils, footprints of creatures from different era's (for the evolutionists) etc.
There are people out there wich scientificaly can proove evolution much more wrong than evolutionists can proove the bible wrong. Science and the bible do go along with each other folks. Do your homework......
- Unomi -
"That wasn't flying! That was... falling with style!"
Apparently I wasn't quick enough to beat all the "HAHA t3h Xianz r teh dum!!11" posts. So I'll say in response: FUCK OFF. Just because there is vocal minority of complete dumbasses who claim to be of my religion doesn't mean I am one of them. It also means that you cannot lump me in with them. I love the stupidity of people who say "well there are many types of Hindus and many types of Buddhists" and then lash out at Christianity because they unfortunately live in a country with asshats like Pat Robertson whose stated goal is to mobilize the most ideologically fuckheaded conservative "Christians" in the attempt to disenfranchise the rest of the voting population.
So, to recap: just because there are people who do things you don't like does not give you license to do the same things back to them.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I'm a consumer whore!
It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.
Powered flight evolved many times. Insects got there first. Bats evolved it separately from birds. Humans managed it last of all.
Long thin snout?
Very thin limbs?
Trying to fly?
Any chance its color is purple?
Does anyone know of a graphical chart of the known evolutionary lineage?
I've always wanted a book that linked all the know ancestors of related species together.
Please respond if you know of such a book or website.
Thanks.
Snakes will fly... if you put them on a plane! See!
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How many people in this topic are going to make the points that powered flight has already evolved several times. I see sombody posting "Actually, powered flight evolved a number of times, birds, bats and insects" and then 2 comments down i see somebody else saying the exactly same thing in a way to make out that nobody has brought up this point before and they should win a nobel prize for slashdoting. READ THE COMMENTS BEFORE YOU POST THE MOST OBVIOUS THING POSSIBLE.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The BBC science team needs some education, first, it is more like B-B.S.. For example, from today they write:
t m
"Shenzhou VI, which has two astronauts on board, is in a low enough orbit to be affected by the Earth's gravitational pull."
Now, I shouldn't need to explain to anyone what is wrong with that statement, but it is so assinine, inane, and crazy that they shouldn't be called "science" writers. This is just a **typical** example of inaccuracy in the publication. The BBC is not what it was, but it is just a bunch of pseudo-scientific charlatans foisting stupidity on many people who will just trust it without thinking.
The full story is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4340102.s
China's spacecraft orbit 'slips'
China's successful space launch
In pictures
China's Shenzhou VI spacecraft is not orbiting exactly as planned and will have to be restored to its original trajectory, state-run media say.
The "orbit maintenance operation" would take place early on Friday morning, said official news agency Xinhua.
Gravity has drawn Shenzhou VI too close to Earth, the agency said.
Shenzhou VI, which has two astronauts on board, is in a low enough orbit to be affected by the Earth's gravitational pull.
It spent a second day in orbit on Thursday, making it China's longest manned space flight.
Xinhua quoted experts as saying the procedure to fix the craft's orbit would be a "normal technical operation".
Nonetheless, the agency said, experts were urging all scientific and technological staff to be "cautious".
..we all know it happened since a dinosaur fell down from the tree, but was distracted in the critical moment, and failed to hit the ground.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
It has all the classic signs of fakeness (being in distant land, politically difficult surroundings, area largely unknown to Westerners, and primarily discussed on paranormal-specific websites)
Plus the images - both of them - were photoshopped. the backbones in the first are obviously superimposed onto what I suspect is an ancient ruined building, and in the second the different lighting on the bones and the dodgy edges where they've been pasted in are very evident.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
> It may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved
> twice.
At least three times: birds, bats, and bugs.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Knowing that things have branched more than once for a given trait isn't just interesting for paleontologists, either. For example, the group of flat worms that include modern tapeworms has evolved parasitism several different times over its history. Knowing that it didn't just happen once lets us find close living relations of tapeworms that aren't parasitic -- so we can develop treatments for tapeworms much more easily, because a lab doesn't need to deal with test worms that are paired with host animals. Viola, better medicines against tapeworms.
It's intuitive to think flight is somehow special because it places extreme physiological demands on the animals that use it, but it's just like any other evolutionary trait. Life is fertile, time is deep. That dinosaurs would maybe develop the trait twice isn't astonishing at all. They were around for a long time, and they maybe had some basic traits (bones with the potential for bird-like light internal structure or something) that made it more likely.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
why, just because we know so little about bird origins and so much about pterosaurs, do we keep forgetting to mention them as flyers?
sheesh...
you'd think a creature with a 20 foot wingspan wouldn't be forgotten about so easily when talking about flyers.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Viola, better medicines against tapeworms.
Unless you usually greet your conclusions with a stringed instrument, I think the word you were looking for is "voila". If, however, you *do* happen to regularly punctuate your sentences orchestrally, then I duly apologise.
"The mayflies are an order (Ephemeroptera meaning "but for a day wing") of insects that grow up in fresh water, and live very briefly as adults, as little as a few hours but more typically a day or two. About 2,500 species in 23 families are known. Other names for these insects include dayfly, shadfly, fishfly, and Canadian soldier."
From Wikipedia.
- passion
Actually, the Greeks (esp. Pythagoras) figured out the world was round. It was only the Christian-based Europeans who rejected science for faith-based assumptions of how the physical world works (sound familiar?).
Is it just me or did anyone else misread the title with "forces" as a noun and "rethink" as a verb?
Somewhere in the world, a science teacher just became depressed and doesn't know why.
"The 90 million-year-old reptile, called Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, belongs to the same sickle-clawed group of dinosaurs..."
Whether or not you subscribe to the whole "dinosaurs became birds" theory, there is no question that dinosaurs != reptiles!This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is a tribute.
That's how I misread the title. Pretty scary, isn't it? Time for some coffee :-)
I've seen a horse fly!
Wow, big surprise. The theory of evolution found incomplete and lacking. Hard to imagine...
We had enough movie plots with the velociraptor. And now we have a vulture dinosaur? Please stop! :(
"And the Lord, being infinite and all-powerful, set in motion an entire universe, starting with an amusing variety of quarks. After many billions of years, life appeared on many of the planetary bodies in this universe. After many millions more, some of these life forms were capable of intelligent thought, and the Lord was pleased. And the Lord did send Soothing Allegories to placate the literal-minded beings who wanted to believe that It had done all this recently (and possibly involving a turtle or magic tree somehow), while leaving the rest to figure out what had ACTUALLY happened."
Freedom: "I won't!"
The Toronto Star had an article the other day that puts another twist on the bird - dinosaur evolutionary path.
From the article :
A new study out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is attempting to stick a fork in the popular paleontological theory -- explored at a major Royal Ontario Museum exhibition this past summer -- that modern birds represent "living" dinosaurs in our midst.
Cello there neighbour!
I remember reading somewhere where a scientist postulated that there might be the remains of dinosaur or even earlier earth-based lifeforms in space, yes in orbit around the earth. When a large scale meteor hits the earth with enough force there will be ejecta which is sent into orbit around the earth or even further. After all we have rocks from Mars on our planet!
So the next Jurassic Park series could include a plot where a moon based research team finds chucks of frozen dehydrated dinosaurs with intact DNA - so maybe we could have the next Jurassic Park situated safely on the Moon but when the experiment goes not as planned, due to chaotic influences, the moon based is ravaged and extraterrestial lawyers in spacesuits are gobbled up like popcorn.
On a more serious note this maybe how life spreads through a solar system. There are probably forms of bacteria or even self replicating pieces of protiens that get transport to other planets via catastrophic collisions and survive the trip.
Ever think that if there really were an alien invasion that /. would /. itself with everyone wanting to welcome them?
Why would you think such things?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
didn't evolve on this planet
So if flight evolves separately on another planet it doesn't count?
Typical terracentric rubbish!
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
From http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/ 4/684
"These results have implications for the understanding of bat evolution, for example, flight in bats may have arisen only once within the Chiroptera (see also Allard, McNiff, and Miyamoto 1996 ). "
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
that would be powered flight evolved 3 times...they forgot bats...this is also for only vertibrates...insects evolved flight also...who know how many times.
nothing but mosquito's and motion blur
mosquito's what and motion blur?
What is dos'nt a contraction of? DOS works but not NT?
Hi scott7477.... I'm your new foe, (or you're my new freak....). Sorry if I've done something to offend... Anyway, I've added you to my friends list (this was the only contact conduit I could find...)
I read the article title as "Dinosaur Feces... (blah blah blah)." Dinosaur Feces. Flying. Two things that would be very bad together.
As a grade school violist, I should really be kicking myself now. Happily I just don't have the energy...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
01: NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS THE DINOSAURS WENT EXTINCT BECAUSE
02: THEY TENDED TO WRITE ALL OF THEIR CODE IN CAPSLOCK
03: BEGAN ALL OF THEIR LINES WITH LINE NUMBERS
04: AND USED CRAZY INDENTATION CONVENTIONS IN COMPILING THE CODE.
Richard Dawkins' book "Climbing Mount Improbable" has an excellent section on how various animal eyes have evolved from basic light-sensitive spots, including diagrams.
Heck, pit vipers have evolved eyes twice -- the typical vertebrate eye inherited from their reptile ancestors, and the infrared-sensitive pits (like the visible light eyepits of some invertebrates) they use to track prey in the dark.
-- Alastair
See L'Anse aux Meadows, the remains of an 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. Lots of Norse technology found there, including a Viking-style forge.
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
All educated people, and especially sailors, in Columbus' day already knew the Earth was round. (if it wasn't, sailors wouldn't have been able to use celestial navigation). I've never heard the claim that Columbus, Spain, and the Church promoted the theory of it being flat - I've always thought it was invented by Washington Irving in his book about Columbus written in the 1800s.
and anybody with a firm grasp of human communication should realize that the "popular" (philosophically MISTAKEN) notion of "begging the question" is actually more useful than the technical one.
because in most cases, a situation really makes a person sit back for a second and think: "Wow, this really RAISES an interesting question." or, the even better use is in response to somebody who tries using a contradictory excuse or a contradictory alibi. "Well...now that begs the question of how you could actually [XYZ]." the word BEGS packs more punch than "raises." it has an effective, even sarcastic ring to it, that 'raises' lacks.
i can't think of an equally punchy way to say that something has raised the question. so you see, the Wrong Usage seems to fit the purposes of communication like a glove.
on the other hand, "begging the question" seems pretty cumbersome to describe the commonplace circular argument. (circularly, it's cumbersome because nobody uses it that way....) most people prefer to call that sort of thing "idiotic" or "circular", when they recognize it. "he's begging the question!" is done. stick a fork in it.
for a while i had a problem with people using "ironically" to mean "strangely/surprisingly/unexpectedly." personally i think it's much better used with its "correct" meaning. but that meaning has been completely taken over by the word "sarcasm." (which has negative connotations, which I don't like.) i'm starting to accept it, though.
so. Masses 1. Philosophy zero.
you've been APPROPRIATED.
"wrong" should say right. or correct.
" 'Correct' meaning is done. stick a fork in it."
so zilly of me.
#5 real man - Bryan Allen & Gossamer Albatross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross
I agree with the point you are making, but you have the definition/use of theories all wrong.
A Theory must be falsifiable. Period. If it is not falsifiable, it is not a theory. A theory that has been falsified is wrong, even if no theory replaces it.
So what does falsifiable mean? It means that "If we were to find that X is true, this theory is false". This means that any assertion, that no matter what cannot be called into question, is not falsifiable, and therefore not a theory, but a mere assertion.
Now the theory of Evolution is a large tree with many branches, and those many branches have many leaves. At first branches were lopped off by being falsified, but still the tree stood. New branches were added. Today, science argues mostly about small leaves on the tree. And these leaf-theories do get falsified fairly regularly.
Like Autumn, however, a lot of leaves can fall of the tree without changing the basic structure that makes up the theory tree. THis is why, even accepting that Eyes are inexplicable today (which I do not accept) does no more than focus the fight on leaves on a small branch on one limb of the tree.
If, however, one could somehow prove that eEyes are in fact inxplicable, that fact would, by the rules of science, cast some doubt on branches closer to the trunk. This just hasn't happened.