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Science

Move Over, Archaeopteryx 46

Posted by michael from the tastes-like-chicken dept.
Reedo writes "The clearest evidence ever of the missing link between dinosaurs and birds has been found in a newly discovered "feathered" fossil in northeastern China, claim scientists. The specimen was found embedded in a large slab of rock, in what scientists think was a former lake or pond."
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Move Over, Archaeopteryx More

Move Over, Archaeopteryx

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  • But if that crappy picture is the 'clearest link,' I'm going to go ahead and score this round for the Creationists. I'm all about Darwin, Evolution and the like. But that picture looked like an ice cream cone thrown at a windshield.

    Nova had a thing on about two weeks ago discussing what was purpoted to the the True Missing Link fossil, found in Greeland. What happened to that?

    • Re:I really hate to say this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PD ( 9577 )
      It's a bit hasty to pass judgement on a tiny little web image, don't you think?

      Missing links are only sought (or feared) by creationists, because it is only they that bring up the red herring of gaps in the fossil record where one might expect to see intermediate forms. So, the fact that this article got any press at all is probably because it would sell some newspapers, not because it's particularly interesting scientifically.

  • Why not CAT scan? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FransUNC ( 518475 )
    Ruben also questioned the authenticity of the specimen, calling for a CAT scan to determine whether the entire fossil slab comes from the same source.

    "There is no reason to CAT scan this specimen, because clearly it's not pieced together," Norell said. "It is preserved on one large slab, and we have both part and counterpart." Part and counterpart refers to both the top and bottom, or both sides, of the fossil slab.

    I don't know anything about this kind of stuff, but what would be the downside of going along with a CAT scan? I don't know the costs/risks involved, so it may be an outrageous or dangerous project with regard to the specimen, but common sense seems like it would be best to test it every possible way we know how...considering we don't have many ways to test this stuff.

    • Re:Why not CAT scan? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PD ( 9577 )
      A CAT scan won't hurt it a bit. They just don't need to do it because it's obvious that the fossil hasn't been constructed out of two unrelated fossils.
    • I'm guessing that the biggest reason to not do a CAT scan is the cost. I'm pretty sure there are no risks to the fossil at all. But they're pretty expensive, the paleo lab probably doesn't get a lot of funding, and the dino probably didn't have insurance. Another reason to not get a CAT scan is that it might prove that this is a hodge-podge of fossils, rather than just one creature. Maybe Norell doesn't want to see this happen, at least subconsciously? Norell said it's obvious that it's one specimen, but Reuben said it wasn't. Well if another scientist doesn't think it's a single specimen, then I wouldn't exactly call it "obvious" that it is.

      The article said it has large feathers sitcking out of strange places; I think it'd be pretty easy for a feather or two from a freshly killed something else to sink down to the bottom of the lake and land on top of the carcass of a lizard, so they get fossilized together. I don't see how a CAT scan would dis/prove this though.
      • The article also pointed out that there are some hawks with feathers that come out of the "hind" legs. The feathers in the fossil are possibly truly feathers from the hind legs (which would probably be true since the real paleontologist says that's what they are) or they could be feathers from another part of the body that got pushed there at death and during fossilization. They are definitely not feathers from some animal that landed on a lizard. Scientists do know the difference between that and a real bird by looking at it. I studied ornithology in school and there is a whole group of ornithologists that don't believe that there is a true link between birds and dinosaurs and they believe that birds are something completely different. But if one were to just look at the fossil evidence, it's definitely obvious, and even with just Archaeopteryx, it's obvious.

        As for the CAT scan, he probably doesn't care that it would prove this is a "hodge-podge" of fossils, since it's definitely one slap and not a couple thrown together. It's most likely the cost, since I know first hand that ornithologists and paleontologists don't get a ton of money for things like this. He said the fossil was on one slap, and not a couple different broken pieces put together. If the CAT scan were to say it was not one, then the CAT scan would be wrong. The second slab that he speaks of is the top part, or cover if you want to think of it that way. The rock above and below the dead bird were taken, as whole pieces.

  • Blasphemy (Score:2, Funny)

    by rf600r ( 236081 )
    As the Arch Bishop of the Curch of the Dancing Archaeopteryx, I curse thee!

    I shall now rock back and forth murmuring Archaeopteryx over and over again until I can read the LEDs on your modem and crush you.

    Good day sir!
  • I'm a creationist sympathizer in many ways. But...

    One criticism of evolutionary theory has been that, unlike other scientific theories, it offers very little in the way of prediction. Unsurprising since it's devoted to the past, but it's still a weakness. Some years ago, I said privately to anyone who would listen when the topic came up that if it was true that birds evolved from dinosaurs, then it follows that there must first have been dinosaurs that had feathers that were used for some purpose other than flight. The necessary structures to support flight could not have evolved all at once, so feathers must have had some other purpose originally. Probably insulation, which dinosaurs would find as useful as mammals do since they were warm-blooded.

    The article did not say whether or not dromaeosaur flew, and as another poster mentioned, the quality of the photos in the article was unsatisfactory. But if it could be shown that it did not fly and needed the feathers for insulation, that would be very interesting indeed.

    • Re:Unsurprising (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cadallin451 ( 536419 )
      Natural Selection offers an immense amount of prediction if you have the sense to see it. It predicts that you should observe gradual changes in species through the fossil record for one.

      Another big point that you are missing is that birds could quite obviously have evolved from already flying reptiles. Ever heard of a Pterodactyl? Pterodactyls were a family of species that looked roughly like giant bats. They didn't have feathers, but they were definately capable of gliding and at the very least limited flight. Feathers could have evolved from scales over time as they changed to be both better for flight control, and for insulation in flight.

      • Natural selection doesn't predict anything. It's a data point, an observed phenomenon.

        If birds evolved from pterosaurs, there is no evidence to show it. The transitional forms that have thus far been found, such as archaeopteryx, are all dinosaurs, theropods such as t. rex. Archaeopteryx is almost indistinguishable from compsognathus except for the feathers. And the numerous anatomical correspondences between theropodia (especially coelurosaurs) and birds are highly suggestive.

        OTOH, there is no evidence that pterosaurs have any living descendants. They seem to have died out at the same time most of the dinosaurs did.

        • Natural selection is a predicative theory.
          It predicts that the "fittest" individuals (whether
          those individuals are considered to be genes,
          organisms, or whatever your model uses) will tend
          to survive in a competitive environment, at the
          expense of less fit individuals. Evolution follows
          as a result of this differential survival rate when
          reproduction is a factor.

          As a direct example, John Holland's schema theory
          predicts that the number of schema S in a population
          at time t + 1 equals a function of it's number at
          time t multiplied by it's relative fitness and
          survivability under crossover and mutation.
      • Pterodactyl skeletons are more like bats are they are like birds; their wings were stretched-out flaps of skin, rather than feathers. No way did they evolve into birds.

        The closest thing to birds we have found so far are the oviraptor (a chicken-sized cousin of the velociraptor) or something similar. The skeleton is similar to a bird in some ways. (This similarity is far from conclusive though, I'll discuss that later.) Raptors were fast-running bipedal predators with long arms. To be as active as their skeletal form indicates, they were probably warm-blooded, and a chicken-sized warm-blooded animal needs either fur or feathers quite badly. Presumably it was feathers, since we know that fur evolved in a quadrupedal lineage. Some fossil oviraptors apparently died defending their nest of eggs -- birdlike behavior.

        My hypothesis here is that the bird ancestor was a small fast down-covered warm-blooded long armed bipedal predator. Presumably the long arms were for catching bugs and small animals. If a larger predator came after it, it would run up a tree. Originally the feathers were just soft branching down for insulation, but it evolved larger stiffer feathers on the arms; these might have helped strain bugs out of the air, or given a little lift to jump higher after a butterfly, and get up the tree faster. Sometimes it would fall out of the tree, but larger feathers would slow the fall. Even larger feathers let it climb trees, jump off, and glide to catch more bugs. Flapping the proto-wings extended the glides...

        The oviraptor fossils _almost_ fit the pre-gliding stage of this. The legs and hips are quite birdlike, aside from the hipbone also supporting a lizard-like tail. Other skeletal changes would have come later: losing the teeth because they are too heavy, hollow bones, losing the tail except for a stub to support steering feathers, breastbone & collarbone reshaped to support massive flight muscles.

        However, there is one serious discrepancy. In birds, the first, second, and third fingers have become enormously elongated and form the bony stiffeners for the wings. (That is, compared to a human hand, the little and ring fingers are missing, and the thumb index, and middle fingers are stretched way out.) Raptors are also three-fingered, but it's the middle three that were retained. It's pretty much impossible to create a scenario where finger 1 would have been brought back and finger 4 eliminated. Unless the scientists are mistaken about raptor fingers, we'll have to look elsewhere for the bird ancestor.
      • Birds did not evolve from Pterodactyls. As you said, Pterodactyls were more like giant bats. They were gliding dinosaurs, not flying ones. Birds evolved from the theropod dinosaurs, which includes Tyrannosaurus Rex and the velociraptor.

        You are correct in your assumption that feathers did evolve from scales. They are modified scales that provide insulation for birds, which require large amounts of energy for flight.

    • Re:Unsurprising (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Creationist sympathizer???" What does that mean, you're supportive of their wishful thinking?
      • It means that I think them not incorrect in pointing out the deficiencies in evolutionary theory. At the very least they keep evolutionary biologists honest by forcing them to answer some of their criticisms and to take a good hard look at some of their assumptions, the data they tend to ignore, and details they tend to gloss over.

        Of course, "creationist science" leaves a lot to be desired in and of itself, but to be fair it's a very young discipline. It's only recently that creationists have sought to put their views on a firm scientific footing rather than just pointing at Genesis and screaming, "It's in there, so it must be true!!!" which convinces no one who's not already on their side. They may or may not have something at this point. There are some things they do a much better job of explaining then evolutionary biologists, but there are even more subjects on which they raise more questions than they answer.

        • Re:Unsurprising (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cp99 ( 559733 )
          It's only recently that creationists have sought to put their views on a firm scientific footing rather than just pointing at Genesis and screaming, "It's in there, so it must be true!!!" which convinces no one who's not already on their side.

          Somebody mod this upto +5 funny. Creationists on a firm scientific footing... as if.

          Have the creationists published a single scientific paper (I'm talking about one in a peer reviewed journal, not some website)?

          Are they still going on about evolution breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

          Still quoting out of context to support their case?

          There are some things they do a much better job of explaining then evolutionary biologists, but there are even more subjects on which they raise more questions than they answer.

          Like what?
          • Like what?

            It's a bit easier to describe where each side tend to do a bad job than where they excel. It's shorter, and each side tends to mirror the other.

            Creationists do a poor job of reconciling the apparent age of the universe to their ideas, since many of the theories they concoct to explain a young universe are not well supported. This is their main essential weakness, covering everything from the age of distant galaxies to the geological record. They are required to refute many systems of thought that are both self-consistent and consistent (by and large) with external evidence in many different disciplines, a monumental task they have not yet really begun to approach in a meaningful way.

            Evolutionary biologists, on the other hand, do a poor job in my opinion of explaining how complexity arises, and irreducible complexity as a special case is especially poorly explained. They tend to ignore data that falls outside their neat schemas, like the iron axe (complete with wooden handle) found embedded in a stratum from the Ordovician, or the gold chains found embedded in coal veins from the Carboniferous. OOPArts are sufficiently rare that their appearance is by nature anecdotal, but they are more common than, say, Archaeopteryx fossils, and ought not be dismissed out of hand.

            • While I would agree that creationists do a very poor job of reconciling the age of the earth with physical evidence (I should add a qualifer to this - not all creationists believe in a 6000 year old earth), I very strongly disbelieve your point about biologists.

              Given that the vast majority of physicists and other information specialists support evolution (and that those who don't have nver published a peer reviewed scientific paper which catches evolution out), it seems resonable to suggest that the problems with evolution and information science lie in the heads of certain creationists, and nowhere else.

              Also, given that Micheal Behe's examples of irreducible complexity, have been shown to be not irreducible, I would suggest that creationists should remain quite about these.

              As for axes in Ordovician rocks and the like, until creationists can come up with a peer reviewed scientific paper on these, I will place them in the same basket as the Glen Rose footprints. Examples of creationist wishfull thinking.

          • Re:Unsurprising (Score:2, Interesting)

            by young-earth ( 560521 )
            How about papers in Nature or in Science? There have been several from, for example, Robert Gentry here [halos.com]. He presents a very, very solid case for primordial granites being formed in a matter of seconds or minutes with the Polonium halos found in them only explainable that way. He has issued a very simple challenge to old-earthers, and no one has taken him up on it yet.

            I for one (and far more capable people besides myself clearly) am not trying to quote about evolution breaking the second law; a much more cogent approach is to discuss information theory in relation to evolution than the oversimplified second law of thermo.

            As for quoting out of context, that's a human failing that all sides of this have done; I don't see how that is strictly and only on one side.
            • "There have been several" creationist papers published. I hate to say it, but if the creationists had the facts on their side they would be able to publish more than "several" papers.

              While of course both sides have quoted each other out of context, I'm afraid the creationists are far worse about this. In large part this is because the creationists hardly ever perform any original research; they have to resort to combing through the scientific literature (or in many cases the popular scientific literature) and quoting scientists to make their case. In many cases this seems to take the form of "quote mining," where the creationist latches onto any quote which appears to be critical of evolution, regardless of the context.

              For Gentry's claims, see (for instance):

              http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos.html

              • Re:Unsurprising (Score:2, Insightful)

                by young-earth ( 560521 )
                Note that in the talkorigins reference you gave there is no mention of the studies in coal-ified wood and other areas that Gentry presented, just a very weak (IMO) argument against Polonium. The issue of helium levels in the atmosphere, if you accept the ideas on talkorigins used in the Gentry article, are an even stronger argument against old-earth than the halos. And no one has yet taken his challenge of making a granite (the technology is available) to disprove his hypothesis.

                As to why there have not been more papers published in the mainstream, orthodox scientific press - that's the tyranny of the majority. For example, submit an objectively researched, top quality, highly pro-MS story here on /. and see if it gets published. The fact that it doesn't get published only shows the bias of the editorial staff, not the quality of the data, research, and writing in the submitted article.

                • Re:Unsurprising (Score:2, Informative)

                  by cp99 ( 559733 )
                  Note that in the talkorigins reference you gave there is no mention of the studies in coal-ified wood

                  You should have looked through talk origins more carefully. This is a link to this page on coalified wood. [csun.edu]

                  • As I said, on the page you gave, there is no reference to coalified wood; I did not scour the site and did not state that the site did not have a reference to it.

                    On that csun.edu page you referenced, there is a lot of speculation ("Although the uranium source is unknown..." etc.) but not a lot of meat. Claiming that U-238 diffused through the rocks has been dealt with as a claim by Gentry in the past; bringing it back around as an argument against him only shows that the attempted debunking is only rehashing already refuted concepts.
              • Just realized I didn't provide a proper answer to your Talkorigins "answer" to Gentry. The theory proposed by Brawley on Talkorigins, while quite clever, is fairly easily disproved [tripod.com]. An extract from that link, emphasis added:

                "This is the most intelligent argument to Gentry's claims I have seen. This is the argument that says radon traveled between the cracks of the biotite and deposited the polonium. This means, however, that the radon would leave scars along the cracks. The radon would be decaying this whole time, and as it traveled it would leave scars along the borders much like a man with his arms outspread holding cans of spray paint and walking through a narrow alley. It would be obvious where he had been. This is not the case in the mica, however, according to Robert Gentry. The radon tracks do not exist. This means that the radon could not have migrated to deposit the polonium. Also, in regard to the theory for radon travelling up through the interior of the earth: How long do you think radon lasts? It has a half life of less than four days. Radon could not travel far within a solid rock matrix, no matter how gaseous it was.

                "As for fluids travelling through the mica? I think I should let Dr. Robert Gentry answer that one: 'fossil and neutron-induced fission tracks appear in U-halo centers in biotite, but are absent from Po-halo centers, thus excluding U-bearing solutions as the source of Po for those halos, irrespective of whether they occur along tiny conduits'."

                Go anything more convincing to refute Gentry? Remember, his papers were peer-reviewed; do you have anything of that caliber to throw back against his ideas?

            • Re:Unsurprising (Score:2, Insightful)

              by cp99 ( 559733 )
              I will concede that Gentry has had papers published, however, his claims on creationism, haven't been. Rather the logical chain works like this: there are holes in rocks, therefore a young earth is correct. Sadly only the hole in rocks has been published in scientific journals (no claptraps such as Creation Ex Nihilo don't count).

              Also, evolution doesn't break information theory, execept in the minds of creationists.

              As for quoting out of context, that's a human failing that all sides of this have done; I don't see how that is strictly and only on one side.

              If creationists had only misquoted sciences a few times, it could be dismissed as a accident, however given the huge numbers of misquotations by creationists, the only conclusions that I can come up with are that certain creationists are more than happy to lie to support their case.

    • A Creationist on slashdot? Who let you in here?

      *kidding*
    • It's not true at all that evolution doesn't make predictions. See the the Talk.Origins [talkorigins.org] archive for more information than I can possibly provide, particularly this [talkorigins.org] article.
      • I should have been clearer. I had in mind a priori predictions, by which I mean predictions that were actually made before the fact. Most predictions in, say, physics or cosmology are of this nature. A theory is propounded and certain consequences of this theory that have not yet been observed are evident; only later on does observation confirm the theory. The prediction I am describing here, that a feathered dinosaur antecedent to Archaeopteryx that used its feathers for some purpose other than flight would someday be discovered, is of this nature.

        Some of the predictions in that article seemed to me to be a posteriori, by which I mean that it was only realized that evolutionary biology ought to have predicted them after they had been made but did not in fact do so. I cannot view this as being quite as impressive, although that does not of course render them invalid.

        The intellectual honesty of the site cannot be questioned: they have the integrity to link to a creationist's rebuttal. Some of the creationist's points are well taken while others seem like mere arm-waving, but as I said, I think that at the very least creationists raise questions that evolutionary biologists ought to answer. As they are becoming more scientifically spohisticated, they are becoming more effective in this role.

        • Ah... I'm not as well-informed on the history of paleontology as I'd like to be, but there have been many fossils found that were predicted to exist before anything like them was found. Examples that spring to mind immediately include a common ancestor of lagomorphs (rabbits) and rodents, which was predicted before it was found recently in Asia, and Darwin's prediction that Africa was where humanity evolved. Before fossils like Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, etc. were found, the prevailing opinion was that Homo sapiens evolved in Asia. Sorry, this is just from memory, I don't remember the source for the rodent/rabbit thing, but the second bit is from Richard Leakey's Origins Reconsidered. I'm sure that better examples exist.
    • "One criticism of evolutionary theory has been that, unlike other scientific theories, it offers very little in the way of prediction. Unsurprising since it's devoted to the past, but it's still a weakness."

      Meteorology is a science, but damned if they cant predict how much its going to rain, or when it's going to rain any more than a day before with much accuracy. If you don't know what I'm talking about, obviously you've never lived in Wisconsin....
    • The feather has been shown to be a modified scale. Reptiles have scales, dinosaurs have scales, birds have scales (ever look at their legs?). The feathers on a bird are modified scales to help insulate the body. They are used for more than just flight, in face, feathers are not a key ingredient in flight, and that's why the defining characteristic of birds is not flight, it's feathers. Other animals fly (insects, bats, etc). If you ever get a chance to look at a bird's wing, it's shaped like that of an airfoil. Flying requires a lot of energy and the feathers help keep hold onto the heat energy. I also believe that Archaeopteryx has been thought of as a gliding dinosaur, not a flying one. Maybe this helps clear things up a bit.
    • Well, I've read through the responses to this post and done a bit more reading on the subject from both sides, and I'm left where I was when we started. The scientific creationist side is characterized by a certain lack of rigor and spotty data, both of which are to be expected, I think, in a science as young as it is. I also find a significant lack of peer-reviewed publications, but I also gather that these are unlikely to appear in mainstream publications regardless of their scientific merit. On the orthodox evolutionary side, I see counterarguments that are so laden with personal attacks and a venom that creeps in regardless of how detatched a tone they attempt, that I cannot regard them as unbiased sources. (Incidentally, it seems that many of the counter-arguments are surprisingly weak given evolutionary science's sweeping claims.) I strongly suspect that it's impossible to find an unbiased source on this subject regardless of what degree of disinterest any particular author should claim.

      I therefore resume my former attitude on the subject, which is roughly that which Sherlock Holmes expressed on the organization of the Solar System.

  • http://www.dinosaur.org/news/news01-04-25bird.html [dinosaur.org]
    Plus it has links to some really high res pics. I can't see where that ugly pic on the CNN site fits in, but this is the same bird/dino. A quick search on Google revealed that most of the other sites covering this showed the pictures from the above link, but at lower resolution.

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