[lasereye]

The turkey-sized animal according to National Geographic “…is a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds. It seems to capture the paleontological ‘moment’ when dinosaurs were becoming birds.”

This kind of statement sounds really impressive to the average person. It sounds like some overwhelming evidence has been found.

“This mix of advanced and primitive features is exactly what scientists would expect to find in dinosaurs experimenting with flight”

Actually they don't know what they expect to see. They look at something and then they decide after the fact that that's what they expected to see.

[grey_whiskers]

They should have checked the original fossil for melamine content. You know, China. /ba-dum t’sssh>

[dadfly]

and there’s another message just decoded from SETI:

“earthlings, send money immediately to your local paleontology department. stop.”

[patriotfury]

book mark -

[spintreebob]

Sure hope these people dont get involved in root cause of current societal problems.

They might see guns evolving... or the war on poverty evolving.

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "Scientists still don’t know how the Archaeoraptor specimen was smuggled out of China and ended up in the United States.
We do know that in 1998 Stephen Czerkas, curator of the Dinosaur Museum in Utah, purchased it for the tidy sum of $80,000."

So, somebody from China smuggles a specimen to snooker a gullible US museum curator, and suddenly all of science is knocked into a cocked hat?
I don't think so.

But the problem of Chinese fossil forgeries is well recognized, as this 2014 Scientific American article illustrates:

" ‘Fossil forgery in the last decade highlights some troubling trends in Chinese vertebrate paleontology’, wrote Xiaoming Wang, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in an opinion piece for the journal PNAS.
'While fossil forgeries unfailingly stoke public fascination … the widespread damages that forgery causes are often not sufficiently recognized.
Amid the renaissance of Chinese paleontology evidenced by stunning discoveries of inconceivable riches of fossils, paleontologic science is treading a path never experienced elsewhere: commercialization of fossils and all that goes with a quasi-free market of fossil trade that has simultaneously become the boom and bane of Chinese vertebrate paleontology.' "

The fact is hundreds or thousands of legitimate fossils are uncovered each year, and while the occasional fraud can excite much comment, even in this case it was quickly discovered and exposed.

[JimSEA]

“Red-faced and downhearted, paleontologists are growing convinced that they have been snookered by a bit of fossil fakery from China. The “feathered dinosaur” specimen that they recently unveiled to much fanfare apparently combines the tail of a dinosaur with the body of a bird, they say. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever been involved with in my career,” says paleontologist Philip J. Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta.1”

Son of a gun! Look who discovered that the fossil is a combination of two unrelated fossils - a forgery. He is a scientist. Just like a counterfeit bill, they made the fake look as much like the real thing as possible. Just like the counterfeit bill, the fake doesn’t disprove the real thing.