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Siberian Discovery Suggests Almost All Dinosaurs Were Feathered
A new study published in Science (abstract) suggests that most dinosaurs were covered with feathers. This conclusion was drawn after the discovery of fossils belonging to a 1.5-meter-long, two-legged dinosaur called Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus. "The fossils, which included six skulls and many more bones, greatly broaden the number of families of dinosaurs sporting feathers—downy, ribboned, and thin ones in this case—indicating that plumes evolved from the scales that covered earlier reptiles, probably as insulation." Its distinctiveness from earlier theropod fossil discoveries suggests that feathered dinosaurs appeared much further back in history than previously thought. Paleontologist Stephen Brusatte said, "This does mean that we can now be very confident that feathers weren't just an invention of birds and their closest relatives, but evolved much deeper in dinosaur history. I think that the common ancestor of dinosaurs probably had feathers, and that all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair."
Time to remake Jurassic Park. And while he's at it, Speilberg can change all the guns to flashlights!
Find some more feathered fossils and conclude that ALL dinosaurs probably had feathers.
I propose that a heck of a lot more digging and research is necessary before anyone starts putting that in print.
Not to mention the modifications we have to make to the creationist parks.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Of course these dinosaurs couldn't fly; everyone knows that in the late Triassic, the Pterosaurs received a broad-reaching patent titled "Feathery Apparatus for Flight". Regrettably, the patent term length at the time was over one hundred million years.
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This means we'll have to redraw 200 years worth of artwork...
And redo other things.... The phrase "Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus of a feather flock together." doesn't really roll off the tongue.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The next Jurassic Park could be a lot more interesting.
But probably won't be.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You realize Siberia wasn't above the arctic circle 160million years ago right? Also... the whole planet was a lot hotter.
Sounds like the dinosaurs were humiliated backwards... feathered ...then tarred.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
For those of us who have been following the literature on the subject, this doesn't really come as a surprise. Rather than that this fossil shows that all/most dinosaurs had feathers where we previously assumed this to be the case only for some groups, this fossil is a confirmation of the already commonly held view (in the field) that feathers were to all probability basal in dinosaurs.
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You evidently don't understand what science is. Science is "right", because the point is that falsehoods are verifiable, and the established truths are verified by the process of peer review. Science is also getting more "right" with each new discovery. This discovery doesn't invalidate previous discoveries: it bolsters them, and adds new information.
We used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe. New discoveries led to new insights. These changes to the scientific understanding didn't change the model of the motion of planets across the sky. It helped improve them.
Conversely, I don't see anyone blaming creationist parks.
There are also museums of natural history dotted around the world, which collectively contain (I would say) tens of thousands of models, which would either have to be replaced or reworked, or reinterpreted as being an artefact of an earlier, less complete understanding.
Say what? There is very little in science that is right. Take the atom, if we accept what we know today about it, then pretty much everything for the last century or two is wrong. Same with dinosaurs. If they were all covered in feathers, then what we knew about them before is wrong.
If scientific ideas really were right, then there wouldn't be changes in understanding. Such a concept wouldn't make sense. Math is right or wrong. 2+2 = 4 is either right or it is not. Our understanding of higher mathematics doesn't change our understanding of prior concepts. Science, for the most part is applied mathematics. How we apply math may not be right and therefore the scientific theory is wrong. That is why science uses models, which again, are mathematical. If enough models point to the same conclusion, then the probability of the science being wrong is reduced. If it is reduced enough, then it is no longer theory but fact.
Creationists have their theory on how the world came about and so do evolutionists. There are more models to support the scientific theory, but even then, there are something like 35 competing theories of evolution. So, until we can refine the models to narrow the results, all we can say is that we know evolution occurs, but we don't really know how. That's not a lot different from what the creationists say.
For the record, I disagree with the creationists. However, if one wants to be totally objective (or at least minimize biases), one has to admit that science doesn't always have the answers. The idea that science can eventually explain everything is as an untestable hypothesis as a deity creating everything. Neither can be proven.
BTW, science is not about proving falsehoods wrong. It is about describing the world/universe around us and doing so with greater and greater precision. Quantum theory states that everything is based on probability. The goal of science is, in any field, is to refine the methodology so that the probability increases that what is modeled most likely represents what is actual.
That's what we thought. You can go lie back down now.
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yup.
There are more models to support the scientific theory, but even then, there are something like 35 competing theories of evolution.
Possibly, but the general concept isn't even remotely controversial (at least among actual scientists). Especially the theory that humans and apes have a common ancestor, which is simultaneously the most minimal example of evolution, and the one that seems to upset people the most.
However, if one wants to be totally objective (or at least minimize biases), one has to admit that science doesn't always have the answers. The idea that science can eventually explain everything is as an untestable hypothesis as a deity creating everything. Neither can be proven.
The predictive ability of science - and the number of things it explains - does continue to improve over time, however. The same cannot be said of religion. Or, put another way, science is capable of changing as new evidence is obtained, as exemplified by this article. The Bible, however, is immutable, and the literalists have to resort to increasingly contorted explanations for how the Genesis account could be factually correct.
Science is wrong
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Science was incomplete, in the sense that our assumptions about the appearance of dinosaurs were based on limited fossil evidence (and analogies to modern lizards rather than birds). And the raw evidence wasn't even "wrong", it was totally valid - only our interpretations were incorrect. Now we have new evidence, which is being incorporated into how we think about dinosaurs. When was the last time that anything was added to the Bible?
Interesting. Science is wrong, and "creationist parks" get the blame.
Hmmm ... This isn't really a case of scientists being wrong. The old images of dinosaurs have generally been "artists' interpretations" of the evidence, and scientists generally agreed that they had little evidence of the outer appearance of dinosaurs. Skin and other soft tissues don't fossilize too well, and we haven't had many samples until recently.
And the idea that birds are close relatives of or descended from dinosaurs isn't new. It was suggested by none other than Charles Darwin himself, based on similarities in the skeletons. Many of his colleagues agreed, but they even more agreed with the reply "Yeah, that's certainly interesting; can you find us some better evidence?" The situation stayed that way until the 1970s or so, because birds don't fossilize well. New fossil discoveries finally supplied enough evidence so that in the 1980s, the birds got officially reclassified as a branch of the dinosaurs.
But it was still well understood that there were a lot of loose ends, and Further Research Is Needed. Were feathers a development of the birds, for flight? Or had their non-flying ancestors had feathers, perhaps for insulation? The evidence wasn't nearly good enough, and it was left as an open question. Over the past decade or so, the evidence has trickled in, and this report seems to be filling in the gap. People who've followed the story aren't surprised; they're just happy to read about the evidence.
In any case, it never was a case of "Scientists thought that dinosaurs didn't have any sort of fur or feathers, but they've been proven wrong". It was more like "We didn't have the evidence, since feathers don't fossilize well, and now we've collected enough evidence that we can be pretty sure that those old artistic interpretations reptilian dinosaurs with bare skin were inaccurate; most of them (except the largest) probably did have feathers." This isn't considered a criticism of the artists, of course, since they didn't have evidence either, and many of them stated repeatedly that most of their drawings included a large shovel-full of conjecture. It was expected that, as evidence trickled in, they'd have to revise their drawings a lot.
But it likely is a good example of non-scientists saying "Scientists proved wrong" when the scientific data goes from "we don't really know ..." to "we've found the evidence ...". This is sorta the flip side of the constant "Those scientists just wasted time and money doing research to prove something that we knew all along" comments from people who have little understanding of what science is all about (and have always "known" things based on no evidence at all).
(Actually, since I first read about this topic back in the 1970s, I've been rooting for the tyrannosaurs having big, colorful cockatoo-like crowns of feathers. But that's just me, and I'm still waiting. But I won't be surprised either way. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Good parroting of the popular Dawkins-driven line, but simply vastly historically incorrect as the sequence of events. Origen of Alexandria (one of the "Fathers of the Church", that is, one shaping core positions at the very earliest foundation of Christianity) was arguing for allegorical interpretation of Genesis in the second century A.D.
I'm aware that many Christians throughout history have argued for an allegorical interpretation of Genesis, which is why I specifically said "literalists" (i.e. creationists and associated nuts). Whatever other problems I may have with the Catholic Church (for example), I do not consider them anti-science. I had in mind the people who try to prove that the speed of light must have changed drastically in order to make the observed size of the universe compatible with their reading of Genesis (e.g. the Ussher chronology). I'll grant that I was a little unfair in blaming "the Bible" for this, but you can't really escape the fact that Christianity is dependent on an essentially immutable set of scriptures*, and there is also a large contingent that views allegorical interpretations as heresy.
The notion that science comes along and "shows religion incorrect" is fanciful nonsense.
Which is why I never said that. But it is certainly not nonsense to point out that the available scientific evidence supports a much different origin theory than the literal reading of Genesis. You can view the hand of God in there if you want; I don't really concern myself with such things. However there is still that very large subset of Christians (and Muslims, and Jews) for whom this compromise is intolerable, because for them, whatever the Bible says must be true.
(* At least within the last millennium or so. Of course in the longer time frame the contents of the Bible - especially the Old Testament - were subject to a great deal of revision and selective editing, which is why the literal interpretation really seems nonsensical to me..)