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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 10/01/2009 : 22:03:58
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Four-winged dino discovery ends debate
This has been a great week in paleontology news!
PARIS: The remains of a ‘four-winged’ dinosaur in China has resolved the ‘temporal paradox’ in palaeontology, confirming that birds owe their ancestry to two-footed dinosaurs.
Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing is staking the claim thanks to a well preserved fossil of a bird-like dinosaur called Anchiornis huxleyi. Until now, A. huxleyi was thought to be a primitive bird. It was presumed to have been a near-contemporary of Archaeopteryx, the first recognised bird, which lived around 150 million years ago... |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 10/01/2009 : 22:51:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Four-winged dino discovery ends debate
This has been a great week in paleontology news!
PARIS: The remains of a ‘four-winged’ dinosaur in China has resolved the ‘temporal paradox’ in palaeontology, confirming that birds owe their ancestry to two-footed dinosaurs.
Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing is staking the claim thanks to a well preserved fossil of a bird-like dinosaur called Anchiornis huxleyi. Until now, A. huxleyi was thought to be a primitive bird. It was presumed to have been a near-contemporary of Archaeopteryx, the first recognised bird, which lived around 150 million years ago... |
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Wonderful stuff, and a great breakthrough for evolutionary science! I also love that it's named for "Darwin's Bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley.
The size of Anchiornis, from Wiki.
I suspect that the tiny little fellow ate insects, and used its long legs both to outrun those on the ground, and to leap into the air to catch flying insects. It may have also used its wings (all four!) to assist and gain more height. It probably couldn't sustain powered flight for long or far.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 10/01/2009 22:52:08 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2009 : 02:53:02 [Permalink]
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Take away the trees
and the birds'll have to sit upon the ground.
(Hum)
Take away their wings
and the birds'll have to walk to get around.
Take away the birdbaths
and dirty birds will soon be everywhere.
Take away their feathers
and the birds will walk around in underwear.
Take away their (whistle)
and the birds'll have to whisper when they sing.
(Chirp chirp!)
Take away their common sense
and they'll be heading southward in the spring.
Oh, remember me, my darling when spring is in the air,
And the bald headed birds are whispering everywhere.
When you see them walking southward in their dirty underwear,
That's the Tennessee Bird Walk.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2009 : 20:11:51 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Four-winged dino discovery ends debate |
Little premature with that declaration, ain't ya? No self-respecting cretinist would ever consider their non-issue to be settled. Besides, now there's another gap! |
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 14:16:13 [Permalink]
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As expected (third down): "Exceptionally well preserved” fossils discovered in China purportedly show feathered dinosaurs from more than 150 million years ago, making them older than alleged dino-bird Archaeopteryx. A study of one fossil was published last week in the journal Nature (“A Pre-Archaeopteryx Troodontid Theropod from China with Long Feathers on the Metatarsus”), and other details were presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The fossils, such as one named Anchiornis huxleyi, bear the imprints of what could be interpreted as feathers as well as the usual bones (see an image of the fossil slab from the Nature article). “All over the skeleton, you see feathers. . . . We realized that this was a much more important species, and definitely one of the most important species for our understanding of the origin of birds and of their flight,” said paleontologist Xing Xu of Shenyang Normal University.
University of Bristol paleontologist Michael Benton, who was not involved in the study, commented, “Drawing the tree of life, it’s fairly obvious that feathers arose before Archaeopteryx appears in the fossil record.” Of course, creationists have no bone to pick over that; if feathers “arose” on Day 5 of Creation Week (Genesis 1:20–23), and if most of the fossil record was formed almost two millennia later (Genesis 7:21–23), then feathers would indeed have arisen before Archaeopteryx remains were fossilized.
Creationists have good grounds for considering Archaeopteryx a true bird. For example, several types of birds in the fossil record have teeth. As for the “feathered dinosaur claims,” such fossils have never shown undisputed feathers, but rather vague representations that could be interpreted as something other than feathers.
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And the punchline  :
| Like Archaeopteryx, A. huxleyi was probably a unique (and, obviously, now-extinct) avian creature that showed some traits that modern birds either lost over the years, or that other bird kinds never had. But their commitment to a specific interpretation of the fossil record’s dates means that evolutionists place this fossil at more than 150 million years ago—the time of dinosaurs. Hence, in their eyes, A. huxleyi can only be a dinosaur. |
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 10/03/2009 14:24:44 |
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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 18:24:34 [Permalink]
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Sometimes I hate being correct. |
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
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Another great find!
