Posted on 09/27/2009 1:50:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Chinese scientists today reveal the discovery of five remarkable new feathered dinosaur fossils which are significantly older than any previously reported. The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, at last providing hard evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
Talking from the conference in Bristol, Dr Xu Xing, lead scientist on the report published online in Nature today, said: “These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now. Now it all fits neatly into place and we have tied up some of the loose ends”.
Professor Michael Benton, from the University of Bristol and one of the world’s leading experts on dinosaurs, commented: “This is one of the most exciting fossil discoveries in recent years. It’s like finding a missing piece of the jigsaw – suddenly the picture looks much more complete”.
Previous discoveries of dinosaur fossils with exquisitely preserved remains of feathers were undoubtedly some of the most important fossil finds ever made. At the time, many paleontologists considered this to be the Holy Grail that demonstrated once and for all that birds are highly derived dinosaurs.
However, the oldest undisputed bird, Archaeopteryx, is older than the feathered dinosaurs previously found. Therefore, critics claimed, feathered dinosaurs could not have been ancestral to birds.
The new fossils are from two separate areas, named the Tiaojishan and Daohugou formations. Comparison of the Tiaojishan and Daohugou fossils suggests that they probably all belong to the same fauna. The isotopic dates range from 168 to 151 million years old for the Tiaojishan and 164 to 158 million years for the Daohugou Formation. Archaeopteryx lived 150–145 million years ago, so was significantly younger than these new dinosaurs.
One of the dinosaurs, named Anchiornis huxleyi has extensive plumage and profusely feathered feet. It provides important new information on the origins of birds and the evolution of feathers.
“This fossil provides confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs, the group of predatory dinosaurs that include Allosaurus and Velociraptor”, said Xu.
It will take a long time to study these things and to determine what they mean.
LOL. Perfect!
So the new evidence perfectly matches their pre-determined conclusions. This musta been funded by a govt grant.
Another Chinese hoax, wishful thinking, or the real thing? Time will tell.
Are these the same Chinese that faked the other bird/dino fossils?
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INTREP
I guess it doesn’t matter that the pulmonary systems of mammals and birds are incompatible. Mammals breathe in and out, birds breath straight through. Oh well...details!
This is something new to me: “Mammals breathe in and out, birds breathe straight through.”
Straight through what? Birds have lungs; their lungs have a certain capacity. How can they NOT breathe in and out?
Please enlighten me.
If they are going to fake these bird-dino fossils, you would hope they would put a little more effort into it. Extensively feathered feet? How in the world would that be a useful adaptation? Seems like it would serve little purpose in aiding flight, and the feathers would probably be detrimental when running on the ground. Oh wait, the evolutionists can always say that this is more proof of evolution, for since we don’t see these “extensively feathered feet” on birds, the loss of such useless feathers is another beneficial adaptation that has happened in the past.
This also bypasses the normal mammalian requirement to breathe out carbon dioxide first, before the next intake of oxygen. Human beings breathe about 12 times a minute, whereas small birds can breathe up to about 250 times a minute. This is a perfect system for birds, which use up energy very quickly and so have a high metabolic rate.
A leading evolutionary expert on birds, Dr Alan Feduccia, University of North Carolina, didn’t even attempt to solve this major problem in his book on the evolution of birds.4 John Ruben, an evolutionary respiratory physiology expert at Oregon State University, said a dinosaur’s ‘bellowslike lungs could not have evolved into the high-performance lungs of modern birds.’5 This would apply to the lungs of any reptile, because any hypothetical intermediate forms would not be functional—the earliest stages would have to have a diaphragmatic hernia,1 i.e. a hole in the membranous muscle powering respiration, and natural selection would work against an animal with such a harmful condition.
1. Ruben, J. et al., Lung Structure and Ventilation in Theropod Dinosaurs and Early Birds, Science 278(5341):1267–1270, 14 November 1997.
2. Schmidt-Nielsen, K., How Birds Breathe, Scientific American, pp. 72–79, December 1971.
3. Engineers make much use of this principle of counter-current exchange, which is common in living organisms as well—see Scholander, P.F., The Wonderful Net, Scientific American, pp. 96–107, April 1957.
4. Feduccia, A., The Origin and Evolution of Birds, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1999. However, this book shows that the usual dinosaur-to-bird dogma has many holes.
5. Rubens, J., quoted in Gibbons, A., Lung Fossils Suggest Dinos Breathed in Cold Blood, Science 278(5341):1229–1230, 14 November 1997.
Why did the Chinese not put that much effort into their last hoax that evolutionary scientists quickly discredited?
Well, I’m guessing the Chinese are new to the fossil-hoaxing business and are still learning the tricks of the trade. They haven’t been at it as long as Americans and Europeans, so maybe I should cut them a break, eh?
Just read this on another thread with the opposite conclusions. Would comment but it would just start a fight with the other guys.
parsy, who wonders
No, don't cut them a break at all. All new claims need to be investigated thoroughly, and if a hoax the reputations of the scientists need to be trashed forever. The guy who supposedly found Nebraska Man has a very poor reputation in science history, and that wasn't even so much a hoax as poor science and wishful thinking.
‘Xu Xing is one of the scientists who originally examined Archaeoraptor. As we go to press, researchers in the U.S. report that CT scans of the fossil seem to confirm the observations cited in his letter. Results of the Society-funded examination of Archaeoraptor and details of new techniques that revealed anomalies in the fossil’s reconstruction will be published as soon as the studies are completed.’ - Response to Xu Xing, National Geographic 197(3), March 2000
The ‘observations cited’ were Xu Xing’s admission that the Archaeoraptor was a composite hoax. This was determined after National Geographic, and many other publications, hailed this as a genuine fossil before the examinations of it had been completed. Xu Xing was part of the National Geographic team working on this fossil, but apparently hadn’t examined it before publication.
Given the history here, it makes me wonder how thoroughly this fossil has been ‘vetted’ before they rushed to press.
So, finding feathered dinosaurs that pre-date the non-feathered dinosaurs is somehow seen as supporting the “theory” that animals evolved from scales to feathers.
Fortunately, being the story of evolution, and not the actual theory of evolution, we can just re-write the history so that feathers came first, and everything’s good.
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