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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."
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.
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.
Wow. Talk about old news. This happened millions of years ago!
Damn, slashdot is behind these days.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
that's why I got out of computer science.
please don't call ID a scientific theory, since it meets none of the criteria. It is not accepted by anyone except fundamentalists. Really, even the catholic church agrees that ID is not science, and that evolution happens. It must be difficult to be that backwards.
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.
Well, as it says flat-out in big, bold type at the Museum of Natural History in NYC,
BIRDS ARE DINOSAURS.
They make no bones about it. It actually gave me chills when I first saw that. They also had a logical and easy to understand rationale for why it's not accurate to say "birds descended from dinosaurs" either; that birds are dinosaurs. (Unfortunately I don't recall what it was right now, but I remember they used an analogy that was similar to "just as man is not 'descended from' mammals, birds have not 'descended from' dinosaurs. Humans are mammals that have evolved over millions of years, just as birds are highly evolved dinosaurs.")
From what I've read, this is becoming a popular - if not the prevailing - belief among scientists at the moment.
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?
"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."
While the majority of mutations are indeed bad, there are plenty that are relatively harmless.
For example, have you ever seen a cat (or other creature) with extra toes? That's an example of a minor mutation which, although it does no good that I know of, also does no harm to the creature. There are plenty of others like this as well, as well as mutations that cause only a small amount of harm but provide the mutated creature with some sort of protection against death or disease. In this latter category you get things like sickle cell anemia, which is incredibly common in parts of Africa. This is an unpleasant condition to have if you get the homozygous form, but in the heterozygous form, it increases your chances of surviving malaria, so many of the people who don't have it die, and the mutated gene gets passed on. Incidentally, this mutation occurs in other populations, but to my knowledge, it is only beneficial in places where malaria is or was common, so it is only prevalent in those locations.
Another form of beneficial mutation occurs in bacteria all the time. I assume you've heard of drug resistant bacteria -- do you know how that happens? Basically, if an antibiotic is applied to a colony of millions of bacteria and even one just happens to have randomly mutated in a way that stops the antibiotic, every bacterium will die except for the resistant one. Given how fast bacteria reproduce, it doesn't take long before even a statistically improbable mutation is pretty much guaranteed to happen... and usually, it does. Next thing you know, you have a whole colony of resistant bacteria because any who lack that mutation just die.
Here's another example of beneficial mutations involving bacteria: when scientists test potential mutagens, one way of doing it is to genetically engineer a batch of bacteria that lacks the ability to produce some essential nutrient. Such bacteria can only be grown on a special medium (one which contains the nutrient that they cannot produce) and will immediately die in any other environment. These genetically engineered bacteria are then brought into contact with the potential mutagen, and the colonies are transferred to a normal growth medium. Then the scientists count the number of colonies that survive. They're seeing whether the potential mutagen has the ability to reverse their genetic engineering... and if the tested compound -is- a mutagen, they will almost certainly see bacteria growing happily in their new home.
So yes, it -is- possible to have a mutation specifically where and when you need it because if it doesn't occur, the population may well die out. We only see the lucky ones who were able to mutate in the "right" way... the ones who didn't are dead.
Is that you?
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".
Here's a brief technical look at the theory by the University of California - Berkeley's
Museum of Paleontology : http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html
Of interest are twenty proposed characteristics "the first birds shared [...] with
many coelurosaurian dinosaurs." Take a look and see what you think.
-Shawn
A dinosaur foot clutching it's neck. Obviously.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
You see, a theory is created by observing natural phenomena and evidence, forming a hypothesis as to why it happens or acts that way, testing it, then letting the scientific community corroborate your tests, and continue testing whenever new evidence comes along to refine or disprove it.
On the other hand, ID was created by replacing the word 'god' with the term 'intelligent designer'
Evolution has a great deal of evidence supporting it, from fossil records, to DNA similarities in similar species, to the fact that farmers or scientists can selectively breed plants, fruit flies, or anything with a short period between generations to selectively breed certain traits.
On the other hand, creationism has a series of books that are thousands of years old, and some rhetoric about fossil records being put there to trick us.
perhaps you'd like to take a look at the wikipedia pages on scientific theory or scientific method to find out what a theory actually consists of.
...we have lots of obvious design flaws. The useless appendix, birth canals that struggle to accomodate our ridiculously oversized crania, eyes that can only see three colors with no ultraviolet or infrared or ability to detect polarization of light like some other creatures, we're crappy runners and swimmers. We'd be great walkers, except that we have oddly angled knees that makes them destined to deteriorate. Despite all these obstacles to other means of travel, we get no flight. Perhaps most importantly, no friggin' laser beams.
What's the probability of a perfect God making such a ungainly creature in his image? Absolutely zero, Pangloss.
Maybe it's time we founded the Unintelligent Design movement.
Once again, the Index to Creationist Claims is the greatest resource on the internet for this discussion.
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.
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.
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.
You take the data from a scientific experiment and plot it out on a graph and then derive a curve from those plotted points. Then you try the experiment again and again and again. Eventually, you should be able to predict where on that curve the data will fall.
You don't need to determine every point on that curve. In fact, it is impossible to plot every point on that curve; there will always be gaps.
We have hundreds of millions of data points supporting evolution. This latest discovery, in an analogous way, fits the curve. That it only "plugs one hole" or fills one gap is absolutely irrelevant.
In any case, you're wrong: some mutations are beneficial; this is not controversial in any way, even among "creation scientists". We have seen it happen on shorter time-scales (the Daphnia of Lake Constance, and so forth). If your main objection is that we haven't seen it on a "macroevolutionary" scale, I have two answers for you. First, the article in question describes such an occurrence; we don't have to witness it happening for it to fit the curve. Second, the "macro/micro-evolution" canard is a false dichotomy.
Lastly, ID is not growing as an accepted scientific theory, because it is not a scientific theory. It is not falsifiable; therefore it is not scientific. Period.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
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
I refer you to this primer on how the probability for spontaneous generation of of life only appears to be so high as to be impossible, and why the "airplane parts in a hurricans" analogy is just plain ridiculous.
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.
What it is saying is that the archeopterix has features that are VERY similar to a dinosaur's, yet very similar to a bird as well. Therefore this is the ever-so-elusive "transitional species" that creationists have been asking for (others exist, but this is one that they would almost always point to). Though it was already essentially proven that this was indeed a transitional species, this provides even MORE evidence and is therefore the proverbial "icing on the cake."
To answer your question about birds and archaeopteryxes (spelling?) coexisting, I would ask you the following: how come we haven't found ANY fossils of modern birds? If they were to have coexisted, there should be SOME fossils of modern birds that could be dated to that period. All modern birds, however, have been found to be from more recent times and, as time goes on, their features depart linearly from that of the archaeopteryx. So, while it may be possible that they existed at the same time, such a situation would mean that ALL of the scientific evidence that we currently have would be wrong and that the pattern of developement would be a total coincidence. That, quite frankly, I have a hard time believing.
Also, note that IANAB (I am not a biologist). Please correct me if I have facts incorrect.
Ride the skies
"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 invite you to read this explanation of probability in abiogenetic theory. It pops every one of your bubbles.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
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 ...