Archaeopteryx
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The Demise of Another Evolutionary Link: Archaeopteryx Falls From Its Perch
A few days ago we saw Ida fall from her overhyped status as an ancestor of humans. Now some scientists are claiming that Archaeopteryx should lose its status as an ancestor of modern birds. Calling Archaeopteryx an “icon of evolution,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) borrows a term from Jonathan Wells while reporting that “[t]he feathered creature called archaeopteryx, easily the world’s most famous fossil remains, had been considered the first bird since Charles Darwin’s day. When researchers put its celebrity bones under the microscope recently, though, they discovered that this icon of evolution might not have been a bird at all.” According to the new research, inferences about growth rates made from studies of Archaeopteryx‘s ancient fossilized bones show Read More ›
“Old Theories Die Hard”: Birds-Evolved-From-Dinosaurs Hypothesis Takes Big Hits With Two Recent Papers
Two recent papers, one in the Journal of Morphology and another in Ornithological Monographs, as well as a ScienceDaily news release titled “Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links,” contain criticisms by evolutionists of the dino-to-bird hypothesis that you would normally expect to hear only from skeptics of neo-Darwinism. Their remarks not only cover problems facing the dino-to-birds hypothesis, but also lament the politically motivated drive to push that hypothesis and ignore scientific dissent. The ScienceDaily article observes that some aspects of bird morphology are simply incompatible with the standard hypothesis that birds evolved from maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs: It’s been known for decades that the femur, or thigh bone in birds is largely fixed and makes birds into “knee runners,” Read More ›