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Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered
anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"
These Dinos are the world's biggest Pheasants! What I wouldn't do for my shotgun!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
TFA explicitly states that:
"... we cannot predict specific colors in fossils, maybe except black. So we are still far from putting colors on dinosaurs."
The "orange, white and black" colours are from an illustration at the top of an article, and a theory about a different dinosaur that definitely had stripes (possibly white and black ones.)
Is it only the sensationalist submissions that get through, or only the sensationalists who submit?
"If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period."
Nobody out there not convinced by the existing lines of evidence proving birds are dinosaurs is going to be convinced by this. And don't kid yourself, there are lots of such people.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were?
I remember being a kid and told a lot of things would never come to pass that did in fact come to pass.
Free Martian Whores!
Flamingo pink, canary yellow, "red factor" coloring. Lots of the brighter colors like those are diet based. That dinosaurs whites could be neon pink if it has the right diet!
Also, some of those melanosomes degrade chemically fairly quick and will never show in a fossil record.
tastes like dinosaurs?
Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were?
Funny, I thought they were green like Godzilla and not purple like Barney.
The evidence and reasoning for birds being the modern descendants of the raptor-like dinosaurs is already pretty damn compelling. If that line of reasoning could have led us astray, then it's just as likely that this is just a case of parallel evolution where feathers and feather pigmentation were evolved separately by both dinosaurs and whatever the hell birds' actual ancestor's were.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is more about answering the question of how bird-like were the dinosaurs already or how early did bird-like features evolve, rather than piling more evidence on the dinosaur-bird connection.
Though I'll admit I'm biased, since that connection means my bird watching is a little less nerdy since it's actually dinosaur watching!
Wait... no, it's still just as nerdy.
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More like a... six-foot turkey.
If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period.
No, they're not. Birds are not dinosaurs any more than squid, octopus and nautilus are ammonites. Closely related they may be, but birds are birds.
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The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/09/1189634.aspx
This is an older article that also talks about the banding.
Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were?
I remember being told that we could in theory breed dinosaurs in test tubes by extracting blood from mosquitoes preserved in amber ...
How about "Birds were dinosaurs. Period."? There's this little thing called evolution... What my ancestors were may not be what I am now. Where you draw the distinguishing line is non-trivial.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
OH God I had a Dinosaur/Chicken dinner last night, no wonder... I have been having Jurassic Park like nightmares.
... and since Microsoft owns the patent to the color they've since filed a motion to sue the Jurassic Age.
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The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead.
ah, no. Fossils are not feathers. Ever. In any way, shape or form. However, these fossils might be of feathers.
If dinosaurs are birds, I guess that means there's no such thing as dinosaurs then.
Could Carrot Top be evolved from the "Carrot Bottom" dinosaur??
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Birds are grouped in the same clade as dinosaurs—the same even-narrower clade as theropod dinosaurs, in fact. (Or in Wikipedia's words: “Based on fossil and biological evidence, most scientists accept that birds are a specialised sub-group of theropod dinosaurs. More specifically, they are members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods which includes dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids, among others.”) Squid, octopodes, and nautiluses do not fall into the clade of ammonites (the nearest clade including all of these animals is the class Cephalopoda); therefore (1) they are not ammonites and (2) your analogy is completely off base.
Is that why they went extinct?
There's been strong evidence of patterns in dinosaur skin for years, clusters of smaller sized scale which in modern reptiles always indicates color patterns. The evidence is interesting for color patterns in feathers but it's not conclusive. We may never know. Also this case closed on the dinosaur bird link is far from true. The problem is birds are potentially traceable to pre dinosaur tree climbing reptiles. Birds likely came from a tree climbing ancestor yet there aren't any fossils of tree climbing dinosaurs. It seems to be a case of parallel development. Dinosaurs are closely related to birds but there is zero evidence of a raptor turning into a bird. One massive problem is there is no significant surviving DNA evidence. Even today it's impossible to tell what group an animal belongs to without DNA. Completely unrelated animals can evolve to look the same to eye. If we can't tell where the split between dinosaurs and birds happened it's also tough to tell if some of the proto birds weren't dinosaurs at all but birds that lost the ability to fly. Also it's possible that some dinosaur due to parallel development ended up looking a lot like birds but never flew. Some rather large dinosaurs had well developed feather but all early birds were small. Their ancestors weren't Utah Raptors they were small tree climbing animals. The whole point is without much more evidence the verdict will continue to be out.
there were plenty of large bipedal herbivore dinosaurs. I don't see how you can assume that barney was a carnivorous dinosaur based on the observations that he is large, bipedal, and purple.
Oh, yeah?
Didn't the research uncovered they were orange?
Well, the Dutch are orange, so I posit Dutch are Dinosaurs, period and all, smartyboy.
Unless you prove Dutch are birds... which live underwater... but then, they might be fish... error! error! error! aaaargh!
I think the whole "dinosaurs evolved into chickens" things is rather silly. Exhibit A: Alligators and sharks. They were around the same time as T-rex. They may have shrunk, but that's about it. Exhibit B: Birds. They do not have useless forearms. In fact, in order to fly, their wings (they have these instead of arms, you see) must be powered by incredibly strong muscles. Even if humans had wings, our pectorals are all simply too wimpy for us to even lift ourselves off the ground. Withered, useless claws would not power up the beefy torso needed for a T-rex to lift itself off the ground.
So what about this "collagen" evidence? Easy. The T-rex ate enough birds that it got bird collagen to fill in its bones. Check out the sea slugs that eat enough algea to photosynthesize. There were T-rexes, there were dinosaurs with feathers, there were delicious birds.
Feel free to call me stupid in the face of your pithy evidences, but in 10, 20, or 50 years (however long it takes), I'll continue to say the same thing (and be right), and you'll say "Well, the facts have shown that our original theories were incorrect, so we've modified our theories, and it's ok, because that's what science does, but you were still a moron when you disagreed with our incorrect-but-widely-believed theory!" -- worse than religious nutjobs you are. (Oh, and parent poster, when I say "you", I'm speaking in the general "you people who disagree with me and my theory of 'T-rexes were too awesome to have stupid bird babies'") Just like with chimps. Latest evidence (findings published last fall, I believe?) shows we didn't evolve from chimps, but everyone who believed in the chimp-is-my-grandpa theory is still right/was always right, and everyone who said "I don't think chimp is my grandpa" was wrong, is wrong, and is an idiot, aren't they?
Well, when it finally finds us, I'll meet you at the truth. Until then, I propose a philosophical, rhetorical question: would you rather be stupid but right or be scientific and wrong? It seems both sides have something to share.
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I didn't see any dinosaurs in "Life of Birds." Ergo, you are correct.
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What an interesting universe you think you live in. Full of strawmen and brightly colored collagen filled bones.
In 20 or 50 years you'll still be as wrong as you are today, because your understanding of evolution is somewhere below the third grade level.
And nobody with any understanding of evolution thought people evolved from a chimps. Chimps have gone through as much change in the last few million years as we have. We have a common ancestor with chimps. If it were still around and we put it in front of you, you'd probably think it looked more like a chimp than like a human. A chimp might disagree. But regardless of what it looked like it wouldn't be able to interbreed with either humans or chimps.
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I can't tell if you're trolling or just nutty - if you are trolling, you're very good at it, so I'll bite ;).
Your position would be worthy of respect if you were a professional in palaeontology with more than "common sense" and "intuition" to back it up. Firstly, you seem to have a gross misunderstanding of how evolution works. You submit as evidence that "alligators and sharks haven't changed", which indicates that you believe evolution happens at the same rate to all creatures. Wrong. A species will evolve until it is perfectly suited to it's environmental niche - because any mutations beyond that mean an inferior creature that will fall to "survival of the fittest". Some horribly unsuited creatures will go extinct, and other species will fork (if the environment offers multiple niches or if some creatures end up in a different environment to their peers). Alligators and sharks are perfectly suited to their environmental niche, so they won't change as long as the environment remains the same. Secondly, you don't seem to have a problem with T-Rex changing subphylum CLASSES (reptilia to aves - a massive change), and you don't seem to argue against it becoming a tiny proportion of it's former size, but you think it impossible that it's pectoral muscles could have enlarged in more than 100 million years? What the crap?
As for your theory that bird collagen filled it's bones, that's pure speculation to support a pre-existing theory. You may as well have said "God put it there to test us", or "those are the remains of Xenu's victims". We can all make baseless speculations, but the reason so many of us afford our faith to science is that science does more than speculates - it provides evidence to back up it's (founded) speculations, and is prepared to alter it's theories when it's wrong (unlike you, apparently). Basically, I *would* rather be wrong and scientific than right and stupid - because it means I'm going to be right about other things a lot more often than you, given that the stupid are just operating on guesswork and speculation.
PS.
Citation to a peer reviewed article or it didn't happen. Alternatively, "Last fall" "they" discovered that you're a 300lbs housebound paedophile transvestite living on welfare with 12 illegitimate criminal kids, and I don't have to bother prove it, nyah nyah.
It is always better in discussions such at this to express things as "evolved from" or "descended from" rather than "evolved into". That's both because it is more correct and because people who don't understand evolution take "evolved into" and turn it into "turned into". Then they get confused because something can only turn into one other thing. Also "evolved into" invokes direction or worse, volition. "descended from" does not.
For example, "birds descended from therapod dinosaurs" is in all probability a true statement. "Therapod dinosaurs evolved into birds" is not as good, because not all therapod dinosaurs evolved into birds. In fact, only one species of therapod led to all extant birds. It is very unlikely that birds have a tyrannosaurid dinosaur as an ancestor, even though tyrannosaurids are therapods.
For the same reason, when talking with the scientifically disadvantaged, its much better to say "birds evolved from dinosaurs" rather than "dinosaurs evolved into birds." Now back to our previously scheduled argument with creationists.
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In 20 or 50 years you'll still be as wrong as you are today
You see, my friends? I do not entertain your wild theory, though it has just the mildest scientific backing, and therefore I must be wrong. Am I wrong? You have no (as in zero) absolute grounds on which to say so. What is more likely -- that T-rexes went extinct or that their offspring are our common birds? I say they went extinct. You say they became birds. Perhaps I am wrong, but for you to say that I am wrong, without proof or review - yet claiming a scientific highground, is worse than wrong. In reality, you are spurning science rather than nurturing it. The search for truth isn't as important to you as the fact that those who disagree with you must not be accepted.
I'm quite sure that I am right. I think that T-rexes did die off. I think that they didn't become birds. My theory is fundamentally more likely, more practical, and matches fossil and observation records better than yours. Do you really want to say that I'm W.R.O.N.G. and that you are right?
And as for the "common ancestor" thing, yes, I'm aware of the argument. It's what came about when neanderthals were no longer considered our ancestors. Then it was moved back to chimps. Now, it's been moved back to some tiger-lemur-looking thing. Is that the argument? That a tiger-lemur-looking thing is our grandparent, because it's not a chimp? Since you were wrong the last 20 times you found an ancestor, that you've found it this time, and everyone who disagrees with you is an elementary-school-level stooge? Not buying it. As I said, I'll happily meet you at the truth, that is, if it doesn't disagree so much with the biological crusade of "monkey is my grandpa" that you refuse to accept it when it's uncovered. Until then, you can continue to think of me as a religious nutjob or whatever you guys are trained into believing all your detractors are.
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you don't seem to argue against it becoming a tiny proportion of it's former size, but you think it impossible that it's pectoral muscles could have enlarged in more than 100 million years? What the crap?
I know how to pick my battles. T-rexes did not go from wimpy arms to the most powerful arms of the animal kingdom, (while shrinking and growing feathers), just because one T-rex, from their future, jumped into a time machine and told them they were going to get wiped out in 100 million years if they didn't start working out their useless foreclaws. If anything, the theory of evolution would say they would have lost their arms during this period of great change. If you are a reasonable man, you can see that this proves the algorithm put forth by the current evolution theorists to be greviously incorrect. You can argue that "their useless arms were the PERFECT candidate for wings, because they weren't being used for anything else!" but that's more rationalization than rationality -- wings are an extremely long and arduous road for evolution to begin sprouting for 100 million years with no immediate reason or intent -- especially when the T-rex, like the alligator, spider, or shark, was likely comfortable at the top of his food chain and therefore had no reason to evolve for another half-billion years, much less to evolve into something LOWER on the food chain.
Citation to a peer reviewed article or it didn't happen
If I must. Looks like it was last fall. What the study of Ardi has taught us.
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Saying "birds are dinosaurs" (or even "Birds Are Dinosaurs") is rather like saying "French is Latin" or "English is Proto-Indo-European." The lineage is unmistakable, but the one is not synonymous with the other. I am not sure why this conflation seems to be acceptable for birds and dinosaurs, when you never hear, for example, "homo sapiens is homo erectus" or "South America is Gondwanaland" or "Intel is Fairchild Semiconductor."
Again, you don't seem to understand evolution. It may only take one generation to sprout wings - of course, from the point of view of other t-rexes, that winged animal would be a mutant/freak, but if it succeeded, it would only take a few dozen generations for that mutant's children to propagate and occupy the new niche. Of course, the reason you never see such amazing leaps of evolution in nature is they are so unbelievably unlikely to be fully functional without some other critical defect - it's like taking a hammer to a flash key, and finding the contents become a porno starring the Pope, Homer Simpson, and 62 African bees, encoded in a format with far superior compression to H.264. Most people would bet good money that you could destroy every flash key in the world before that happened. Evolution generally makes modest, iterative changes (because a small change is both far more likely to happen and far less likely to be defective), it is not impossible in evolution for an animal to take a 90* turn.
Not that I'm claiming that's what happened. Without significant fossil records, this is pure speculation and therefore as worthless as any other speculation. But what I intend it to say is that evolution is not necessarily speculative (at least, not worth speculating about unless you have significant evidence) - that is to say, you cannot debunk evolutionary theories with speculation. After all, your argument is the same as the "how did something as complex as sight evolve?" counter-argument, which was literally debunked before evolution was a known theory (Darwin debunked it in his (in)famous Origin of Species).
But they weren't comfortable in their position. Remember that the K-T extinction killed all of the largest creatures, and only the smallest survived. The K-T extinction compliments, not contrasts the avian theory. Besides, the name of the game is not winning, it's surviving. The most successful sub-phylum is not Chordata Vertabrata (vertebrates - our sub-phylum, and the sub-phylum of almost every "familiar" animal), it's Arthropoda Insecta (insects) - who are lower down the food chain than most vertabrates. Insects are eaten by the billion, but they're still kicking ass, because they've found something that works - and they'll be around long after we die out (precluding extreme nuclear wars or an extreme cosmic collision).
http://www.strategiadesign.com/images/packaging/DinoNuggets.jpg
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No one in the preceding posts said T-Rexes did not go extinct or that they evolved into birds,
They said that birds evolved from dinosaurs - but there were more than one type of dinosaur species and undoubtedly they did not all survive to evolve into birds.
Well, first of all, many paleontologists, most notably Jack Horner, believe that T-rex was actually a scavenger. As a scavenger, it was most definitely not at the top of the food chain.
Also, as far as I know, it was not decided whether chickens evolved from the T-rex or ostriches evolved from the T-rex. Ostriches do not have strong wings. They have powerful legs, though. Chickens can only fly short distances. Both have a heavier skeleton and weaker muscles.
Finally, I am not quite sure you understand just how long 65 million years is. The split between chimps and humans is thought to have occurred between 5.4 and 6.3 million years ago. (Note that I never said that we evolved from chimps. We simply share a common ancestor.) That's a long time. However, the time between then and now could fit 10 times between the KT boundary(the end of the dinosaurs) and now. That amount of time is pretty much unfathomable amount of time for most people. And you mean to tell me that it is impossible that chickens or ostriches evolved from the Tyrannosaurus rex? Creatures evolve from other creatures depending on their environment. If the environment calls for smaller creatures, and through mutations, smaller creatures are born and able to survive better, then those creatures are going to survive, while the larger, less suited creatures die off. This isn't a quick process. It is also not suited to large populations. The smaller the population, the more likely that those traits that are helpful will consistently show up in offspring. A small population, such as one that was likely found just after the KT boundary.
I can feel myself going on an evolution rant, so I will stop now. Just remember that hunches and wild theories mean nothing without valid, peer reviewed evidence. I will gladly take science over guessing games.
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I can feel myself going on an evolution rant, so I will stop now. Just remember that hunches and wild theories mean nothing without valid, peer reviewed evidence. I will gladly take science over guessing games.
Sadly, the supporting arguments for evolution are rationalization, conjecture, manipulation, and "You don't know evolution, and that's why you disagree with it" bullocks. If you want to discuss evolution with me, you must accept that I understand it just as well as you do. I've read all the manipulative literature that you have. I've seen the documentaries, articles, and heard the dialogues. If you can convince yourself that dinosaurs evolved from their glorious forms into birds from the time of their last fossils until the time of the first bird fossils, then you must understand what you look like from my point of view -- as I've quite certainly heard enough from yours.
Pretend for an instant that the fossil records we have are correct -- that the big dinosaurs were killed off. Pretend for an instant that what we see in our modern-day rainforests, savannahs, wetlands, and great plains (extinction of races, not evolution) might have happened BEFORE such phenomena were so easily observable. Pretend that having your most vocal advocates commonly employ the strategy of using unrelated [and unobserved] case studies to patch together their framework of groupthink-enforced manipulation -- might not be convincing to people who don't think like you do. Can you pretend these 3 things, and then tell me, with a straight face, that any of what you say is believable -- I'll have to find myself in disagreement.
Let me put it this way.
If you really want to dance this dance, and argue with me that you are more likely to be right than I am when I say that they died out, not evolved into avians, then you're wrong. You are not more likely to be correct. Natural observations and fossil records are on my side. You have one-in-a-trillion shots, inference, and narrative on yours. Scientifically, I do claim the scientific highground in the name of simple observational science. If you wish to file counterclaim for it, you'd better understand that you aren't arguing with an idiot, or someone who understands evolution any less than you. I'm not using rhetoric, long-shots, guesswork, or unobserved phenomena. I'm saying what happens to hundreds, if not thousands, of species every year happened 60 million years ago. Whatever theory you come up with to disagree with me must be scientifically persuasive enough to disagrees with a theory based on that common, observed FACT of nature... more simply put -- everything dies -- not a theory based upon another theory that was based on the observations on how animals alter, during the course of their lives, to adapt to their environments -- and maybe dinosaurs learned to fly and became chickens.
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thought to be the precursors of feathers.
Can we please stop passing off wild ass speculation as actual news?
If you want to discuss evolution with me, you must accept that I understand it just as well as you do.
Every thing you say demonstrates that this is simply not true. Every misconception, every "simply because this doesn't mean that" strawman, every misstatement of what has and has not actually been observed, belies what you actually understand about evolution.
Yet by declaring it to be the case that you know everything about evolution already, you indicate that you do not wish to actually learn about the reality of evolutionary science.
But that's okay. Science presses on without need of your impossible-to-earn approval. Just do us all a favor and don't run for office.
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What good is a shotgun going to do? They're already dead.
...and that is why all the species of birds that exist today lie in the same fossil beds of all the dinosaurs that ever existed and that is why modern human fossils exist in the the same fossil beds of all the dinosaurs because everything was created at the same time and just died out at different intervals.
I'm confused on how you take that side of the things but you don't disagree with the age of the fossils. Does it really matter since I'm sure you also think that there is life after death only for humans and not the trillions of other living organisms on the planet.
If you want to discuss evolution with me, you must accept that I understand it just as well as you do.
Every thing you say demonstrates that this is simply not true.
The only difference between my understanding and yours is that I understand that it is wrong. When I describe it, I won't use rationalization, long-shots, conjecture, and attempted philosophy to attempt to support it. I won't weasel around things trying to find something, ANYTHING to connect point A to point B. Simply because it can be explained in a trillion-to-one shot does not make it plausible, likely, or the truth.
When I describe the current theory of evolution, I describe it for the fraud it is. I look past the beauty marks and describe the warts. You can exclaim that those are understood to be beauty marks, and I'll say they're still a bunch of ugly, infected warts. You might pull up the latest conjecture from some philosophy student's book on evolution -- and say that my understanding is missing the mark, that my understanding is misunderstanding. This is dangerous because then you don't listen to a single word I say. You read through paragraphs of simple, reasonable, observation-based explanation of why you are wrong, and by the end, all you've heard is yourself saying "LA LA LA LA LA HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND MY THEORY SO HE'S NOT TALKING TO ME!" You close your mind up like a brainwashed zealot, not because you are a bad, science-hating person, but because that's what evolutions proponents have taught you to do with their rats mazes of explanations. If this is how you view evolution in your mind: 'It is something that no one who disagrees with it can possibly understand as well as I do', then you will never be able to have a constructive dialogue on evolution. Never. Consider yourself direly warned.
I haven't convinced myself that it is truth through years of indoctrination that our school and science programs have all set themselves about propogating. For you, the faith in evolution is as strong as the faith that the turning of the earth will show this hemisphere to the sun tomorrow, just as it did today. You have to ask yourself: Is it healthy for me to put such faith in something that is described as a 16-trillion-to-one chance on the optimistic side?
In either case, to be fair, you must cede that my theory is just as strong, if not stronger, than yours. In the beginning of this discussion, everyone took me to be an idiot with a mindless, silly theory. Now, I hope, only most of you do.
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I didn't say that humans and modern chickens were all born at the same time as the dinosaurs. I just said that dinos didn't give birth to humans and chickens. How do new animals come to be on our planet? I don't know. Simply because I've found things I find inexcusably wrong with the existing theory does not mean I've come up with a solid origin story for the new species we uncover every year. I just did the easy part. The hard part would take me much longer to work on, and I'd probably have to start a new line of work.
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When I describe the current theory of evolution, I describe it for the fraud it is.
No, when you describe it, you describe what you imagine the theory is, and then explain why your imagination is obviously wrong.
Your posts in this thread are completely chock-full of misconceptions, errors, and flat out fabrications of what evolutionary theory is. You make claims about what evolutionary theory states, but those claims are completely wrong. They are strawmen. You then proceed to burn them, and think that proves you "right". Good job. *golf clap*
You see, I don't think you're wrong because you disagree with evolution. I think you're wrong because you obviously have no understanding of evolution but claim to. You can't possibly prove evolution wrong without actually knowing what it is saying.
If you actually understood evolution like you claim to, then we could have a reasonable discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of these claims. You might actually have something useful to contribute. But since you don't know, think you know, and ergo obviously refuse to educate yourself, you cannot contribute anything useful.
You see, I have been listening to you, and that's why I know that if you understood evolution like you claim to, you could, yourself, point out at least half a dozen errors in your description of evolutionary theory. Until you can demonstrate this understanding by pointing out those errors, then you're simply another example of someone who thinks deliberate ignorance is a form of intellectual strength. So, come on, demonstrate your understanding to me. What outright falsehoods have you stated in your posts?
Because I'm feeling very generous, I'll give you a hint on one of them. You mentioned something about T-Rex's limbs being unable to evolve into bird wings. In the actual theory, it is in fact limb structure itself that provides a very strong clue (among many).
Just in case you manage to google that up, read up on it, pretend you knew about it already, and want to come back and here and say how your vague and brand new comprehension enables you to prove it wrong, keep in mind there are plenty of other errors you made. If you can't point them out, I'm just not going to believe you know what you're talking about.
And if you can point them out, then you were just trolling with your lies. But believe me, that's pretty much the best case scenario for you.
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Actually, I did address the ridiculous rationalization of "T-rex useless limbs are perfect candidate for wings" as what it is -- rationalization and just ANOTHER trillion-to-one shot THAT MUST HAVE HAPPENED BECAUSE NOW WE HAVE BIRDS! It's ridiculous. The sooner you see it for what it is, you will thank me for pointing it out to you.
You haven't stated one thing wrong with my theory. You refuse to state that my theory is statistically, without hyperbole, hundreds of billions of times more likely than yours -- for EACH species of bird that exists. You cannot refute it because you don't know your own theory better than I do. You do what you are trained to do -- tell me I don't understand it and call it a day. Guess what? You're wrong on two counts: I do understand it, and you're theory is still a rotted egg with holes punched through it.
If you had any SHRED of care for actual science in you, you would THANK me for finding something wrong with the theory. No no no... instead of going into a room where you had stored a mouse you were planning on killing only to find a snake (and no mouse in sight), you insist on telling me that a solar flare probably caused the mouse's DNA to rearrange and become a snake, and that my theory that the snake ate the mouse, as we see commonly in nature, is Stupid because I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR RETARDED THEORY. I do understand your theory and since you cannot refute mine with reason, you reduce yourself to a slavery, wimpering, drooling, brainwashed appliance only capable of telling me I don't understand. That is what YOU don't understand about your theory.
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Actually, I did address the ridiculous rationalization of "T-rex useless limbs are perfect candidate for wings" as what it is -- rationalization and just ANOTHER trillion-to-one shot
Wow, my ever so subtle point just zoomed right past you, didn't it?
Yes I know you addressed the ridiculous "T-Rex limbs evolved into wings" theory, that's what I said. But what I also said, and which you can't seem to wrap your head around is that there's only one problem with refuting that theory:
THAT'S NOT THE ACTUAL THEORY.
The actual theory of the evolution of birds has nothing to do with T-Rex or his limbs. Nothing. Not a scrap. That's just some B.S. you made up or misheard or whatever. Do you know what a "strawman argument" is? Well all you're doing here is burning down strawmen.
And as I already said, that's only one of many blatant misunderstandings, falsehoods, and outright fabrications you've made up on the spot.
You claim to understand evolution... You claim to understand it as well as anyone. You insist that you do all you want, but you demonstrably do not.
If you had any SHRED of care for actual science in you, you would THANK me for finding something wrong with the theory.
If you had a shred of care for science, you would LEARN about the ACTUAL SCIENCE. Not whatever you make up, or your anti-evolution sources tell you, or wherever the fuck you're getting your completely wrong information.
UNTIL then, you can't find something wrong with a theory that you don't know jack shit about. It's of course possible that if you admitted you don't know shit, went and actually acquired an education on the subject, learned what the flying fuck you're actually talking about, THEN in some years you might be able to find something wrong with the theory. And THEN you would be thanked; you may even become famous!
As it is, you've found nothing. You think you have, but you think you know something about evolution when you don't know anything. Which is why you have no basis for understanding why you haven't found anything. That's why all you can do is cry "Wah wah evolution is just blind faith!" No, blind faith is where you got your education on evolution.
You are deliberately ignorant. The odds of a person like you actually discovering a flaw in evolutionary theory is as likely as *snicker* a T-Rex turning into a bird.
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Go ahead and mod me down you ignorant bastard. Touch yourself while you do it. It's the closest you can come to bringing an argument against it. You may deem me an idiot, but inso doing, you claim that a mere idiot brought your indestructible ivory tower, built by your century's greatest non-idiots, to rubble.
Continue to delude yourself with thought experiments while reality and logic scream at your door. Watch as the sun dances around the earth, and the galaxy around the sun in the impressive, embarrasing reality you've constructed for yourself. History will see you for what you are -- another chump that bought into a propped-up theory because he didn't want to have to go to sunday school anymore. It won't remember me for anything, because I was just some random guy who stopped to point out the obvious.
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What is more likely -- that T-rexes went extinct or that their offspring are our common birds? I say they went extinct. You say they became birds.
Comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it? Setting up straw men is, apparently. Nobody has ever said birds evolved from T-rex. What we are saying is that birds evolved from a species of therapod dinosaur. T-rex was a therapod dinosaur that was not an ancestor of birds. But the last common anscestor of T-rex and birds was, with very high probability, a therapod dinosaur.
On the other hand, you were claiming that T-rex stored unprocessed collagen from the feathers of birds it ate in its bones. That would be an amazing digestive system and a collagen storage technique of a type never before seen in any organism. Which says to me you are very wrong.
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Is the article saying that the dinosaurs colors are somewhat like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/German_flag_Reichstag_6376.JPG
History will see you for what you are -- another chump that bought into a propped-up theory because he didn't want to have to go to sunday school anymore.
Ah. Now I see. So sad!
You don't have to pick between religion and science. I haven't. Science and evolution don't disprove God, and God doesn't demand we abandon science. Jesus is my copilot. Knowledge is my instrumentation. :)
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...and that is why all the species of birds that exist today lie in the same fossil beds of all the dinosaurs that ever existed and that is why modern human fossils exist in the the same fossil beds of all the dinosaurs because everything was created at the same time and just died out at different intervals.
I'm confused on how you take that side of the things but you don't disagree with the age of the fossils. Does it really matter since I'm sure you also think that there is life after death only for humans and not the trillions of other living organisms on the planet.
I tried that argument with another creationist yesterday. His response was "you just haven't found those fossils, keep digging." I fear that our civilization is far too coddling of idiots, which is why we don't see more selection for critical thinking skills.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer