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
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!
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
I hate to break it to you, but IRC commands don't work on Slashdot.
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.
Here is a link with working images on it, the site of the paleontologist to whom a local pointed out the site.
If this is a legit fossil, my guess is that its an ocean-going creature. If that thing flew, it would have needed enormous amounts of energy to keep itself aloft. It probably would have had to eat constantly. Unless, as one fantasy author speculated about dragons, they were lighter-than-air flyers, full of hydrogen or methane or something.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Either that, or evidence that the theory of evolution is falling apart at the seams.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. Traits that are similar to each other are known to have evolved many times during biological evolution. Like powered flight.
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
No, fool, he was trying to save time and effort by typing "/me" instead of "I".
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.
"...But is it a dinosaur? Despite my limited knowledge in that area of inquiry, it seems unlikely, for a variety of reasons - but primarily, the condition of the bones suggests a fossil much younger than the Cretaceous Era. It is, based on my understanding of human skeletal remains, possibly even contemporaneous with humans, or at any rate, early hominids. And yet, that is impossible. Unfortunately, proper carbon dating will have to wait - the local government is notoriously shy about allowing any historical or archaeological material out of country for any reason. "
Okay, let's review.
Either this is a hoax, or this guy is totally naive when it comes to fossils. Having a bachelors in anthropology, I can say that option #2 is totally plausible.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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.
You can't say this enough. This thing is huge. It beats any vertebrate record by far.
This article claims about a seperate, confirmed dinosaur find that
Local palaeontologists said the dinosaur was a herbivore measuring up to 51 metres (167 ft) long - beating its nearest rival, the 100-tonne Argentinosaurus huinculensis, by a good eight metres (26 ft).
So the current vertebrate record is 167 ft. If this thing is hundreds of feet long... Christ, that's enourmous. They say that these giant sauropods had to eat constantly to maintain enough energy. The sauropods were eating plants, and while animals are a bit more nutritious, that would necessitate of successful hunts.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this. Could it be some long-ass sea snake?
I'm going to write a letter to National Geographic, maybe the BBC or some other organizations to see if they can follow up on this story. Casper Shilling claims that he's running into political difficulty organizing the excavation, and he doesn't have an internet connection in Iran.
Of course, US and UK hostilities with Iran won't help this situation AT ALL. GOD DAMN YOU, GWB!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
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? ;)
Looks like Photoshoposaurus.
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.
The only "controversy" on the subject of the evolution of the eye is that which creationists have attempted to manufacture. Do you have specific problems with any of the published research on this subject since 1994? If not, then what is the problem, exactly?
Or perhaps what you mean by "controversy" is that scientists are still researching the specifics of the mechanisms by which the eye might have evolved, and thus we have multiple papers on the subject? If so, I think you are mischaracterizing as "controversy" what scientists would call "discussion".Why on earth would you expect this? Perhaps you just have strange expectations.
And last I checked, the arthropod phylum even today offers a wide variation among its members in number of legs. If you are interested in the evolutionary paths that lead to a specific number of limbs, perhaps the phylogeny of the arthropods would be a good place to start looking?So let us say someone comes in and says that we should, with certainty, keep an open mind about the idea that maybe the earth is flat after all. "Round earth" fanatics clinging to the theory that the earth is sort of roundish need to realize how history repeats itself; our beliefs can and have been turned on their head surprisingly in the past. Yes, of course all available, non-discredited data and theory we have with which to explain the world around us suggests the earth is a slightly lumpy sphere. But maybe we've just fundamentally misunderstood things about the shape of the earth; there could be possibilities we haven't considered yet.
Do we bother to give this person the time of day?
Or do we just say, screw that, we're going to stay with the round earth theory-- as well as the theory of evolution-- because it explains all the data we have, and no competing theories for that data exist.
Saying "maybe your theory is wrong" is effectively meaningless to someone working in the field of science unless you can immediately answer the question "then what is right?". Theories aren't overturned by "I don't like that theory, give me another". They're overturned only by alternate theories. And no, half a post on slashdot about how maybe space is a looping 3-manifold, and the space photos showing a round earth are an elaborate optical illusion, and we can figure out the details of why this is some other time, don't mean you have an alternate theory. If you cannot form your ideas in terms of falsifiable, rigorously defined models with predictive power, you do not have anything scientists can do anything with.
P.S.: If IHBT then my hat goes off to you.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The world is round.
Historical evidence shows that most people have known the world is round for thousands of years. That everyone thought it was 'flat' until Columbus is a combination of promotion by himself and the Spanish royal family who sponsored him and the Roman Catholic church. In fact the route taken by Columbus was not the most obvious one. Its more like the route that would be taken by someone who *knows* there's a large landmass in the north Atlantic and wants to go under it to go around to the far east. Northern Europeans had been sailing the north Atlantic all the way to Canada for hundreds of years by then.
I never understood this. OK, creationists are by definition not especially bright, but why do they consistently misspell 'prove', and always in the same way?
Perhaps there is some classic, standard work of creationist material that they all memorise and regurgitate as required, and which contains this error of spelling? Has this small mutation of the language propagated itself in this isolated and self-contained colony, and are we seeing a case of linguistic speciation here?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
One argument against evolution that I have is you don't see all these half developed fossils being dug up. For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff. As far as I know, this isn't the case.
;)
Well, you know what - organisms just don't develop that way. Evolution isn't about randomly growing an extra arm on your side and waiting for it to evolve into something useful. No, evolution always builds on something that is already a functional part of a functional entity. So when the basic tetrapod (four-legged) 'model' evolved, it got fine-tuned during the evolution of the basal tetrapod's descendants: the legs of an elephant are different from those of a newt. Evolution also does not plan anything ahead. It only happens here and now. The direction is decided by current conditions, which create a certain kind of selective pressure.
To finish with a funny fact: some early tetrapods like Ichthyostega actually had seven or eight digits on their feet!
Insects tend to evolve much faster then most other multi-cell animal. They Live short and reproduce a lot. Lets take the common house fly who has an average life span is 3 days. So in the course of our life a common house fly family has evolved the equivalent of a half a million years compared to humans. That is why insects are used by Biologists to study evolution, They have short life cycles and we can study effects over time is a short period. So it is not surprising that Insects have walked on earth, flew on earth much earlier then vertebrates. I am sure some people are going to say well if Bugs evolve so much faster then us why aren't they smarter then us? Well it is an issue of survival that effects evolution, because bugs can reproduce so rapidly and have many offspring, their genetic structure will say from generation to generation in spite of low intelligence and being on the bottom of the food chain, so the need for intelligence never gave them much of an edge. While for humans on the other hand who reproduce slowly and have small number of offspring usually 5 is the limit before major health problems insure. In order for us to survive the person who was smarter or more creative tend to live longer then the person who wasn't, concept like Well I can out-run the Jaguar, I don't have claws and teeth like the Jaguar, So I might as well get this big stick with a pointy tip on it and use it as a claw and teeth to kill it from a better distance. V.S. someone who is a little more dense and is like "Ill fight the Jaguar to the death using my bare hands", with 13-16 years before you can reproduce you have plenty of time to be in a life threatening situation to see if you are able to survive the situation. Being more less evolved is an old 19th century concept. We now realize that we evolve at different rates but there is no more or less evolved it is just how well we are evolved for the environment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Houseflies live for about a month, not 3 days.
There is an organism that does live only three days, but I do not recall which one it is. I think it is a mosquito of some variety.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I thought Buitreraptor gonzalezorum meant "Lesbian dinosaur that looks like Gonzo" (from the Muppets).
I could be wrong however.
--ngoy
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.
"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
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.)
You're making me nostalgic...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1