Slashdot Mirror
4-Winged Proto-Bird Unearthed In China; Predates Archaeopteryx
Wired reports on a find described September 24 in a note at Nature and the day after at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology: a dinosaur fossil bearing true feathers on four limbs. The fossil was discovered in northeastern China, in strata believed to have been deposited between 151 million and 161 million years ago. If that estimate is correct, the newly discovered Anchiornis huxleyi is at least one million years older than the believed age of the more famous winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx.
8-Winged Meta-Bird?
riverrun, past Eve and Adamâ(TM)s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recircul
See, God does exist and He hates episodes 1->3.
We're all doomed if they manage to bring these birds back to life in the future. This is almost as bad as flying mantas.
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." -Archimedes
like a year ago on Nova.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/program.html
And from the documentary, it was obvious that the discovery had been made some time prior to the making of the show.
So this is old news. I guess dinosaur news travels slowly.
My sister's husband's brother's cousin knew a kid who met a Chinese kid on the internet who said he was part of the team that made this thing. Those Chinese can make anything.
*Yawn* wake me when they find a Yeti....
Where are all the transitional species? Everyone actually agrees that Archaeopteryx is a dead end so where are the primitive birds? The problem is the date for feathers keeps getting pushed back and there have even been early lizards found with what appear to be feathers. One massive gap is if birds evolved from dinosaurs where are all the tree dwelling dinos? The only ones seem to be Archaeopteryx and related protobirds. Odds are birds branched off very early on and were a separate line of evolution so saying birds evolved from dinosaurs is kind of like saying we evolved from chimpanzees. Closely related but separate lines. It's comforting to think dinosaurs survived by adapting but that's false since birds evolved long before the extinction and seem to go back to the early days of dinosaurs not the end of their reign. There's no question they were closely related it's just all the new evidence keeps pointing to an earlier and earlier separation and probably goes back to the time we were all essentially lizards.
so i guess two wings didn't do the job of flight for this proto birds
It could also be a dead end in development.
Sometimes evolutionary traits come up early then the creature dies out only to be "re-evolved" later.
There sometimes seems to be a misunderstanding in evolution. Concepts the strongest survives, or evolution will only get better and better. Doesn't always fall true. One minor disadvantage could kill you out, allowing the weak creature to exist and thrive without your presence. Or even good traits that get killed off only to come back again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I also remember watching that document and was fascinated. However, a few wordings from TFA are interesting.
In fact it does refer to the microraptor (which parent's link is about). "A similar configuration has been seen in other feathered dinosaurs, including Microraptor* (SN: 1/27/07, p. 53) and Archaeopteryx (SN: 9/23/06, p. 197)." So they know it is similar to earlier findings.
"...is the oldest known to have sported feathers and is estimated to be between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first known bird..."
So they have found yet another feathered, four winged dinosaur. All such findings help us understand more of them. In addition, this one appears to be older than the previous findings which again gives us a bit better image of what happened and when. I'm interested to see how this thing is different from microraptor. So they seem to have made findings that are nothing revolutionary but give us again a bit better image of what has happened, how and when. Probably some news sources misinterpreted that to mean much more than it does
(*: Should not be confused with mircoraptor, which is a type of predator mostly residing in IRC chatrooms and preying on teenagers)
"Fuck it, we're going to five wings."
Anyone find it a little amusing that a species found in a totalitarian country is given the specific name huxleyi?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
did you ever think why these so-called missing links are dead and buried in the ground? god killed them, that's why. doesn't that teach you anything? THEY AREN'T HERE ANYMORE. don't you wonder why that is and why you shouldn't dig this stuff up? god killed them fair and square. who gives you the right to mess around with god's intention?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Possums are a good example of the less 'fit' surviving. They are not terribly strong, fit or intelligent. They are however survivors that can reproduce when other animals are struggling.
Not that this is really relevant, but if the margin of error was about 5 million years, how are they confident to say that it was 1 million year older?
The defective 4 winged bird was... made in China.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Frankly, I wish Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart would just shut up about all that stuff.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
SATAN did. SATAN put those bones there you fool!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If humans can have conjoined twins and occurrences where one developing foetus is absorbed into another resulting in additional limbs and anatomy, why can't prehistoric animals have them too? This may no more be a defect in the phenotype than true genetic drift
The really depressing thing is the article comments. It seems the Creationists found out about the article, and are pinging the bejeezus out of it in the comments.
My personal favorite bit of ignorance starts like this:
am nor a scientist or even an academic of any kind but as I understand it and please tell me if I am wrong but for a Theory to become fact it has to ...
*raaaaaaaaz*! Thanks for playing.
According to the article it is the evolutionary stage before birds like today? What type of flight did they have with all these wings? Anyone pick this info up?
i tried, i failed
not many people understand how hard it is to fake real genuine stupidity
its a kind of genius, the troll that can feign true and convincing retardedness
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Loving Troll Father, we thank you for this cornucopia of naivete,
And for all your blessings of the easily duped to us.
Lord Troll Jesus, come and be our guest,
And take your place at this trollish table of bounty.
Holy Troll Spirit, as the trolled fool feeds our trollish pride,
So we pray you would nourish our trollish souls. Amen.
so beeth the prayer of the troll upon a successful catch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Since you can't prove your "theory" of bible-ution, you must accept that Saturday morning cartoons propose possible alternatives . . . that is, unless you're like most slashdotters - ignorant.
I've heard some modern birds will occassionally be born with feathers on its legs. This is thought due to a gene not yet completely removed from the genome, but deeply repressed. These kind of mutations are called avatar traits in the literature.
1) theory
2) You never heard of the bible, did you? Since you can't prove your "theory" of evolution, you must accept that the bible proposes a possible alternative . . . that is, unless you're like most slashdotters - ignorant.
I freely accept that any and every fact I perceive may be wrong. I might actually be a mental patient locked in a padded room, imagining I'm typing a message on Slashdot. I might be a butterfly dreaming I'm a computer programmer. I might be a brain in a vat, being fed neural impulses from a simulation of an artificial reality. Or, even more unlikely, the Bible might actually be true.
And....? Did you have some actual point to make? And for bonus points: are you a troll, or simply ignorant?
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
This is far from the last time I will say this, but no true scientist would believe the theory of evolution to be irrefutable. Darwin didn't, he says in his book that the human eye keeps him awake with its complexity, the fossil record is laughing in his face, and if any system could be found that could not have evolved his theory should be thrown out. Beyond that, it hinges on the belief that the world is millions of years old, which (bear with me here, please) is scientifically unlikely, given the vast amount of evidence suggesting the contrary (you've heard this before; salt in the ocean, rate of development of human culture, decay of magnetic field, and the dust on the moon, for openers).
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
You mean "atavism" not "avatar". An avatar is something you masturbate to in Second Life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
Well, I for one believe in the Last Thursday Theory. This theory states that our world and the rest of the universe was created last Thursday (I forget the time). We were created with all our memories intact. The planet was created with all its fossil beds faking an old world in which geology and evolution had happened. The stars were created, along with the beams of light streaming toward our eyes showing us where they are. The bible was created with all its misleading story about a false (and none to bright) god.
I challenge you to find any evidence that this isn't true.
(Actually, there is also the other theory of why our universe was created: It's actually a simulation study. Each elementary particle in our universe is actually a data cell in the memory of a celestial computer that's running the simulation. Each unit of Planck time is one cycle in the simulation. Occasionally, the simulation is stopped, some editing is done, and the simulation is resumed; we call these events "miracles". We can't actually prove this theory, because if we ever do, the simulation is stopped, and some editing is done to invalidate our proof. This theory is not incompatible with the Last Thursday Theory, of course; last Thursday was when the simulation was started, with data initialized to include our memories, the fossil record, and the stars.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Yes, I agree, the bible is most likely a fictional account of the creation of the world/universe/whatever. I never actually read the fucking book, and don't plan on it. But I don't go around crowing that evolution is fact. So who's the ignorant one here?
BTW, that was my fucking point. I mistook you for someone smart enough to figure that out.
As for the bonus points, no, I am not trolling. I get modded as such because your fellow mod-point-having-slashdotters are just as fucking ignorant as you are, and can't comprehend the simple point I made - that evolution is not a fact. THAT, my friend, is what's irrefutable.
That creatures evolve is a fact. The process of how this happens is the theory, and since we were not there when most of it happened, we have to be satisfied with having a very good idea how it happened, hence a theory.
Darwin might well have been worried about the eye and it's place in biological history, but do you think that references that are heading toward 300 years old are up to date?
Let us take that eye for example, and look at how things might have happened. Light is a form of radiation, and is an energy source. Things that are exposed to light are often altered in some way as a result of absorbing that energy. Photosynthesis is one example
There are bacteria in the ocean today that sense light, and move up or down depending on the light conditions. There are larger yet still primitive animals that have concentrated their light sensing substances into small areas, yet do not have eyes in the manner that we think of them, but "see" shades of lightness. There is a whole range of different eyes that vary from fairly simple, to the eyes of raptors. So we have an energy source, a basis to detect it, and creatures making more or less use of it. Given that the earliest light sensing was probably similar to the bacterial model noted above, there is noreason to think that similar processes existed a long long time ago. Not magic, nor any divine intervention needed.
Dust on the moon refutes the age of the earth? Oy...
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?