Slashdot Mirror
Earliest Bird Had Feet Like Dinosaur
aychamo writes "A 150-million-year-old fossil of Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird, may put to rest any scientific doubt that theropods gave rise to modern birds. From the article: '[A new fossil] presents important new details of the skull morphology [shape and function] of the earliest known bird, showing also that the skull of Archaeopteryx is much more similar to that of nonavian theropod dinosaurs than previously thought.' In the new fossil, the foot looks more like that of the four-toed foot of Velociraptor and its other nonwinged theropod relatives. The specimen also clearly lacks a reversed toe. Because Archaeopteryx lacked this stabilizing toe, it almost certainly did not habitually perch in trees. This leads scientists to believe that it was a land based predator."
Obviously God is testing our faith.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Come on, this doesn't prove anything at all. Until we can find fossils for every single stage between this and modern birds, you clearly can't prove anything, and there are still holes. Modern birds could have still popped up independently, intelligently designed and perfect.
Wow. Talk about old news. This happened millions of years ago!
Damn, slashdot is behind these days.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Even the more better to catch the worm!
that's why I got out of computer science.
There's a fossil gap between you and your parents. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find the "missing link" between you. Therefor, they are not really your parents. You must have come about by spontaneous generation.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Is that you?
A dinosaur foot clutching it's neck. Obviously.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Well, as it saith flat-out in bigge, bolde tipe at the Museume of the Historie of Nature in Londone,
THE WORLD IS FLAT.
They makest no bones about it. Faith, it gave me chills when I first chanced to see that. They also had a logical and easy to understand rationale for why it be not correcte to say "the world appeareth as though flat" either; that the world is flat. (I recall not juste what it was hither, but I remember they used an analogie nigh similar to "juste as the seas are not 'appearing to be of water', the world is not 'appearing to be flat'. The world is totally flat of its owne, juste as the seas are totally water of their owne.)
From what I've read, this hath been coming to be a popular - if not the prevailing - belief amongst scientistes at the hither and nowe.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Actually, a search on Yahoo for the creature was initiated on the Bell South network millions of years ago and since Yahoo did not pay for the "enhanced service" the results are just coming in now. Should have used MSN Search, but then again the only search result for "dinosaur +'will not fly' +crashes" would have been Internet Explorer.
"A degree," huh? That's one helluva convincing argument. Why, I think my science teacher has a degree, too. In fact, all of my science teachers had degrees. And they taught things a lot more specialized than "science," things like "Fundamental Genetics," "Molecular Genetics," "Evolution," "Developmental Biology," "Bioinformatics" and "Biochemistry." And guess what, all of them taught evolutionary theory. In fact, if you collect all of the Ph.D's who believe in ID and all of the Ph.D's named "Steve" who agree that evolution is well-supported and the best explainer and predictor of our observations, the Ph.D's named "Steve" will outnumber the Ph.D's who believe in ID.
I've been reading Clare Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys and have enjoyed her description of the beginnings of the Royal Society. Composed of the best scientific minds of the day, non-scientist Pepys headed up the society (twice, if memory serves). His bottomless curiosity about the mysteries in the world around him led him to question and converse with people like, say, Newton without actually quite understanding the details.
Reminds me of the best conversations on Slashdot - a collection of exceedingly bright - or at the very least, exceedingly curious - people verbally jousting, having fun, being fools and occasionally sharing some really brilliant insights.
I suppose every generation and every age thinks it knows the deepest secrets of the universe only to find that their theories need the occasional tweak as our understand expands year after year. I find it all quite amazing.
That said, why is it that the ID people's approach to science remind me of Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes? Hmmm ...
Wow! Imagine the droppings! Watch your head...