Give me the steps from scales to feathers.
B: Recent experiments suggest not too many steps needed. Second, I'm under no obligation to list a number of steps. You however, have an obligation to prove it can't happen. Second recent experiments suggest this happened fairly quickly. Bird feathers and scales are formed from the same proteins. It also appears that they are governed by a similar genetic regulatory cascade. Have you not ever observed a chicken's leg? It has both scales and feathers. But none the less, keep telling us that there is no link between birds and dinos. You sound very convincing. Not.
B: A little later I'll post an experiment in which scales were inadvertantly converted to feathers. Scales and feathers are the same stuff, but in different forms.
YOU propose how that came about. Archeopteryx is a bird. Or if you prefer call it a reptile.
B: I prefer to call it a transtional bird. Thats what it is. Reptile is not a useful taxonomic rank.
You don't even know if it was cold blooded or warm.
B: Most likely warm blooded.
Or a thousand other things that would identify it as one or the other, or as something in between...it was lost with the DNA!
B: Well, you're right there. We don't have any archie DNA. But our genomes contain much flotsam and jetsam acquired during our evolutionary history, as do birds.
So my bird expert is just as good as any of your LABEL game experts,
B: Your bird expert is outside the mainstream of evolutionary thought when it comes to bird evolution. Furthemore, you still haven't documented that Feduccia has claimed that archie is not a transitional form. Your attempt at argument from authority has failed. Either give us some reasons why we should not accept archie as a transtional form, or move on to another argument.
no matter how much they stamp their evolved little hoofs and say, "it is settled!"
B: It is. Only Feduccia can decide for himself when it is time for him to abandon his failed hypothesis. The vast array or data, from comparative genetics, homologies with therapod dinos, cladistic analyses, embryology and the fossil record are so heavily in favor of the bird theropod-dino link, its not funny.
All you have are fossils, no DNA, you can only SAY it is a transitory species. It cannot be proven.
B: Proof not required in science. THis is science 101. Theories in general can't be proven, only falsified. The simple fact is, is that Archeaopteryx has features common to either therapod dinos or birds. By any meaningful defintion, it is a transitional form between major taxons. Birds don't have boney tails. Theropods too. Theropods don't have flight feathers. Birds do. Either present data which refutes that or move on. Arguing the "data is wrong" not a good scientific argument.
Once again the ability of ToE to have the only evidence in science that cannot be falsified is a marvelous mechanism to keep this circular logic machine alive.
B: To be clear, the problem Jehu is having, is not the evolution is unfalsifiable, but that evolution is so far unfalsified.
A little later I'll post an experiment in which scales were inadvertantly converted to feathers. Scales and feathers are the same stuff, but in different forms.
B: Its now a little later. This is reposted from a previous post of mine:
"Now in case your wondering where feathers came from, consider the proteins which make up feathers are the same ones which make up scales. Isn't interesting how some birds have scales? Ever see a chicken's legs? Feathers are simply evolved scales. One of my favorite papers is "Requirement for BMP signaling in interdigital Apoptosis and Scale Formation" by Hongyan Zou and Lee Niswander, Science Vol. 272, 1996, pgs 738-742. The goal of this paper was to understand what transpires during the embryonic development of a chicken. Early in their embryonic development, chicken feet are webbed, later on the "interdigital tissues" (i.e. the webbing) is destroyed when the cells making up these tissues, for lack of a better description, kill themselves (cell apoptosis). The experiment tested an idea that the cells received a biochemical signal which "told" them to undergo apoptosis. The experiment was basically to block the biochemical signal, and see if the digital tissues remain. The experiment was a success.
But now for something really interesting, What Zhou and Niswander also found. From their abstract,
" Expression of dnBMPR (thats an inhibiter of the biochemical suicide signal) in chicken embryonic hind limbs greatly reduced cell apoptosis and resulted in webbed feet. In addition SCALES were transformed into FEATHERS"
Folks, thats like trying to invent the pizza and comming up with a helicopter instead.
This research example illustrates a couple of things. First evolving feathers from scales, ain't that big a deal. It also lays waste to the idea that evolution is not an experimental science, which creationists claim on a continual basis. "