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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."
Do not turn this into a religious fracas. There has been far too much of this nonsense and frankly all it does is make everyone sound like a bunch of hillbillies.
While this "bird dinosaur" may appear to be a sort of "missing link" in the evolution of pre-bird species into birds, this in no way indicates that "evolution" exists. It simply shows that God Intelligently Designed dinosaurs to perform foot donation transplants to now extinct bird species. The birds' incescent preening of their natural feet, drove them to the brink of vanity and demanded the more robust dino feet be transplanted. The species is now extinct because vanity is a sin.
-/OK I had a hard time keeping a straight face while typing that, how do ID supporters manage to lay that BS on the rest of us without cracking up?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"ID supporters say that there is a gap between *species A* and *species B*. But once a species between A and B is found, ID supporters say now there are 2 gaps"
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
I know you're being facetious, but I think the following idea is important. It's 2005, and religion really needs to catch up with humanity and science. I'm agnostic, but if God existed and wanted to communicate a message to us, wouldn't it make sense to embed any sacred truths in the very fabric of reality?
We're discovering more of them all the time, faster and faster, by studying the properties of the atoms we are made of, the electromagnetic fields that permeate space and time, and the rocks under our feet. Life only makes rational sense when understood from the perspective that science allows.
Why would a supreme being rely on a communicating via language dictated to fallible human beings, who would then translate it and allow it to accumulate errors, inaccuracies, and nonsense.
The Bible-thumpers out there are thumping on the wrong bible. If there actually is a bible, it is the universe itself. We are all reading it together in unison as we speak.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
How's this then: what if the chance of the first piece falling into place was incredibly slim, but with each successive correctly-placed piece, the probability of the next piece correctly falling into place became higher? What if there were billions and billions of proto-cars, and the only ones who got to the next step were the ones who already had previous steps right? This changes the probability a fair bit, doesn't it?
The theory of evolution does not suggest that it all happened at once, not does it suggest that nature got it right the first time, or even that it was one simple linear progression from ooze to human being. The fossil record is littered with failures, and even our own bodies show plenty of "false starts".
Hey, it's the creationists who want to impose religion into these sort of issues. I and and practically everyone else would dearly love to keep *religion* seperate from *science*. Unfortunately there are *some* people who don't - to the extent of attempting to redefine the word "science" itself to include astrology and tarot card reading*cough*Kansas*cough*.
I do know the theory of evolution and the theory of probability ...
Your argument shows quite clearly that you don't know the theory of evolution. Hint: the dumbed-down, strawman version you present here is standard creationist propaganda.
And for that matter, "I know probability theory" (Keanu says: Whoa!) is a pretty ambitious statement. If you haven't (at least) studied it intensively at the graduate level, you probably don't have the first clue. Very very smart people spend their entire working lives trying to figure out how probability really works.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The Catholics have, for the most part, accepted evolution. The pope said that science and Christianity can get along just fine, and in most of these disucssions you'll find someone who went to Catholic school, and was taught evolution in science class. No, you can thank Protestants for this one.
So do you also believe that bats are birds, and that rabbits chew their cud?
And are you sure that your god created man on the 6th day and not before he created plants and animals as per Genesis 2?
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Wait wait... you have an accepted scientific theory of ID? Please, please tell me. I'd love to hear it, as would any other scientist.
On the other hand, you're probably just full of shit like all the rest of the IDiots. A scientific theory of ID doesn't exist. People much more respected in the "field" of ID than you (ie, Michael Behe) have completely and utterly failed to come up with a scientific theory of ID without changing the meaning of science so drastically that astrology and homeopathy also fall under it. You, and any other moron who says they have a scientific theory of ID, are full of shit.
Anytime someone refers to amino acids in an origin-of-life debate, that's a red flag for "Person doesn't know what he/she's talking about". Here's a hint: Take a biochemistry class. Learn about RNA world hypothesis.
> 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.
FYI, science isn't in the business of proving stuff. It's in the business of explaining stuff. And birds as descendants of dinosaurs is the best explanation on the table right now.
> Modern birds could have still popped up independently, intelligently designed and perfect.
Yes, but invoking magic as an explanation is useless, because it's compatible with anything you can imagine. Even stuff you can't imagine, for that matter! It has absolutely no value as an explanation for anything.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There is also a written record of the creation, where the creator is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Now, what makes JHWH the more likely creator? Every time you pull the 'written record' argument, you should be ready to defend your specific mode of creation and creator. I can't see anything special about the judeo-christian creation myth in comparison with the creation myths of other religions. Your faith in this specific creation myth is based on a cultural bias.
There is a record of evolution. It is in our genes. It is beneath our feet. It is everywhere around us in the biosphere.