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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."

6 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Obviously by Eightyford · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously God is testing our faith.

  2. Old by Golias · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow. Talk about old news. This happened millions of years ago!

    Damn, slashdot is behind these days.

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    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  3. So did my first girlfriend... by cloudturtle · · Score: 3, Funny

    that's why I got out of computer science.

  4. Re:ID by AuMatar · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

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    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  5. A similar scrawl from ye olde Slashe Pointe, 1258 by Sensible+Clod · · Score: 3, Funny

    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
  6. Re:ID by caenorhabditas · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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.