Dinosaur research backs link to birds

AP on Yahoo ^ | 4/14/07 | Randolph E. Schmid - ap

[Oztrich Boy]

How can that be when their process of telling the age of something is so acurate that tested on a live elephant to be 3000 years old?

You have a source?

[I see my hands]

Sunday the Conure or Nancy Pelosi in Syria?

[A knight without armor]

LOL! I needed that!!!!!

[endthematrix]

"Scientific text? Looks like an AP article to me. "

Friday's issue of the journal Science

Protein Sequences from Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus Rex Revealed by Mass Spectrometry

(You'll have to pay to read it)

[Rokke]

It’s a newt from Pakistan.

[CountryBumpkin]

It is obviously a premonition of Pelosi in Iran. :)

[goldstategop]

T. Rexes and other raptors were the forerunners of birds. That means two things: they were warm-blooded, displayed bird-like behavior and certainly wouldn't make the mistake of assuming their ancestors had anything in common with reptibles which are NOT dinosaurs. So you can still see dinosaurs on earth today. They fly.

[I see my hands]

"a dinosaur turning into a bird doesn't sound like much evolving"

Birds, the greatest things of all things that can be classified, have mastered the air. That's evolving.

[Iscool]

Matt Lamanna, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, called the finding "another piece in the puzzle that shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs are related to birds." Lamanna was not part of the research team.

Well, they did have the same Creator...

[cookcounty]

"...and the fact some fossils have feathers.

Ah yes, Areopterix, the Piltdown Bird, or better-than-Piltdown Bird. Discovered by enthusiasts in the back yard as soon as the ink was dry on Origin of the Species and then ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[endthematrix]

The pieces were of other unknown bird-like feathered dinosaurs. The tail turned out to be from a Microraptor.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1248079.stm

[garylmoore]

You have a source?

A book by Hal Linsay.

[garylmoore]

the results are accurate to within anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.

That’s what I’m talking about.

[jim35]

[Birds,...have mastered the air. That’s evolving.]

Tell it to a mosquito.

[jim35]

[T. Rexes and other raptors were the forerunners of birds. That means two things:]

Only two? Shouldn’t it also mean they had hollow bones? Or, if that doesn’t have to follow, then why should the other assumptions?

[jim35]

[If this quote is representative of your overall ability to understand scientific text, I thank God you’ll never be piloting any plane I’m gonna be in....]

If you find that skepticism involving the science of 68 million year old connective tissue proteins means the skeptic must be a drooling idiot, then you have some pretty unusual standards for measuring intelligence. Maybe you’re just offended by someone insulting your faith?

[Eclectica]

Dr. Alan Feduccia, of Chapel Hill, NC, must be foaming at the mouth at this news.

He's done some very elegant embryology to show that birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs. Although I think he's wrong, I like to think I saw a tiny dinosaur at my birdbath yesterday afternoon!

:^)

[Oztrich Boy]

You have a source?

A book by Hal Linsay.

LOL! Good one. I missed the sarcasm in your original post

[dasboot]

The article quoted a scientist very careful to point out that the finding supported a theory.

"Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that's all based on the architecture of the bones," said Asara. "This allows you to get the chance to say, 'Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related.' We didn't get enough sequences to definitively say that, but what sequences we got support that idea."

However, what was most notable, was the way Reuters kicked it up a notch:

"A Tyrannosaurus rex femur bone is shown in this undated photograph. Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken. The study results were published in the April 13, 2007 edition of the journal 'Science.' (- c Science/Handout/Reuters)

PROOF!

The newt and frog stuff probably should have given them pause, until they could get a little more 'proof'. It sort of scrambles things. Suppose the next set of samples yield.....mammalian sequences? Tuna! They'll look kinda foolish. [oh...no they won't: no one will ever know....'flush'.]

[sirchtruth]

"Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that's all based on the architecture of the bones," said Asara."This allows you to get the chance to say, 'Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related.' We didn't get enough sequences to definitively say that, but what sequences we got support that idea."

This "scientist" statement is the kind of statenment I expect from an honest scientist wanting this research to prove a certain theory. (Non-scientific theory.)

So when you couple this with the Reuters statement no wonder laymen get these crazy ideas that scientist no longer rely on proof, but conjecture.