Giant Dinosaur Bird Discovered

Cyclist110 writes "The BBC has the story of the discovery, in Inner Mongolia, of a Dinosaur bird twice the size of a man and weighing in at over 3000 lbs. From the article: 'Chinese researchers uncovered the fossilised remains of the flightless giant in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia. The researchers had originally thought they had found the bones of a tyrannosaur — the group of dinosaurs to which T. rex belongs — due to their large size.'"

Xing Xu

[BamZyth]

I am too lazy to find hard references, but Xing Xu, the researcher who found
this fossil was once involed in the discovery of another "dinosaur bird" which
was shown as a fraud. To his credit, he was also involved in the team that discovered
the fraud (isn't it strange?)

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/19 50967.htm [abc.net.au]

FTFA : In 2001 he was embroiled in controversy over the discovery of a fossil believed to be the 'missing link between dinosaurs and birds, which tests revealed to be a clever fraud.

Re:Hold me

[ChronoFish]

You rationalize like a creationist.

For starters humans are larger than most other primates and our fossil record shows a progression in height.

Aside from that, evolution makes no prediction about size. Evolution is not (does not have to be) linear. What is predictable, is that if size matters (either smaller or larger) a population will tend to the beneficial size over time.

-CF

Re:Why beaks?

[fimbulvetr]

Seed extraction.

Read more about darwin's finches and how they had selective pressures to get better at seed extraction, both to overcome selective pressures of competition, but also about fruits developing more elaborate protection membranes. Depending on circumstances, beaks can and do vary in size over a matter of decades, depending on which fruits are available (i.e. more/less rain that year, new fruit from nearby island, etc).

Digging for seeds and pecking a tree might seem to be about the same thing, but they hardly are. Seeds are a vital supply of many creatures' vital nutrients. It might also seem trivial for us to extract seeds from an apple using our fingers and a teethed jaw. Now imagine it with just your teethed jaw and no fingers - suddenly beaks become a pretty darn good idea - especially when considering the seed is also hard to open, since it's developed a tough membrane due to its own selective pressures.

There are numerous articles and books detailing what we (think) we know about these finches, it'd be unfair for me to attempt a summary here, especially considering this is well outside my expertise.

Re:It's pretty simple (I'm a Creationist myself)

[onedotzero]

I think active athiests see how much damage is done by religion. I would like to suggest you watch The Root of All Evil [imdb.com] by Richard Dawkins.

Although somewhat terse and often rude[1] the documentary highlights some serious problems with accepting religion and giving it the respect that it sees as being an inherent right.

[1] Not necessarily a bad thing - this is Richard Dawkins through and through :)

Re:Creationists

[localman]

I agree almost completely... but I was raised fundamentalist Christian and argued the creationist side of things many times in my teens. Then around 17 or so all the good points by others started adding up and I had doubts. And then I went through an agnostic phase, and finally settled as a happy well adjusted atheist :) My sister followed a similar path on a different timeline. So I'm just saying that discussion with religious types isn't always 100% useless. They'll probably never admit it during the argument but you can plant the seeds for later thinking, and people can sometimes change their mind.

In other words, I believe (perhaps irrationally) that respectful debate is not always just a waste of time.

Cheers.