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Science

4-Winged Dinosaur Fossil Found 150

Posted by timothy from the hunted-to-extinction dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Scientists in China say they have found fossilized remains of a dinosaur with four feathered wings that it probably used for gliding, a find they say strengthens the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. See the story on CNN or BBC with a cool rendering of what it possibly looked like or at NYTimes (yadda)."
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4-Winged Dinosaur Fossil Found More

4-Winged Dinosaur Fossil Found

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  • take this with a grain of salt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davejenkins ( 99111 ) <slashdot&davejenkins,com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @05:55AM (#5141972) Homepage
    There was an excellent documentary on the BBC last summer that showed the elaborate lengths to which the Chinese fraud industry will go to fake a winged fossil.

    The fraud detailed in the show fooled even National Geographic, which had spent thousands on research, documentation, and 'verification' by palaentologists.

    I bet $20 this one turns out to be a fake.

    • Re:take this with a grain of salt (Score:4, Informative)

      by gene_tailor ( 601527 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:20AM (#5142053) Journal
      Well, I'm not a fossil expert but the peer reviewers for Nature are buying this one.... or should I say six... Supposedly there are 6 different skeletons of this new species and the find is being published by Nature. See the 'news and views' from Nature here [nature.com]; the data is here [nature.com] but I think people without subscriptions may not be able to see it. Time will tell.
      • There are a lot of important discoveries that have come out of China in recent years. Take a look at the info (and cool pics) on this page [ndtilda.co.uk] for more info.

      • Re:take this with a grain of salt (Score:5, Interesting)

        by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @10:19AM (#5143100) Homepage Journal
        Peer reviewers or not, when I heard this described on NPR last night, they commented that "usually fossils come out in fragments and are very difficult to piece together. These came out very whole, and amazingly detailed, down to all the feathers details." That just screams fraud to me.

        • Re:take this with a grain of salt (Score:4, Informative)

          by j_w_d ( 114171 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:04PM (#5147890)
          Fossils come in all kinds of states. The condition depends pretty much on the geological history of the region in which the deposit was located, the nature of the burial environment and post-burial events (insects and scavenging animals working the corpse). Having an NPR talking-head make an asinine statment like "fossils are very difficult to put together" screams "media meister with foot-in-mouth disease" to me. Besides which, anyone can look at the images on the Nature site and see that the fossil in question IS in several pieces.

          The difficulty in assembling a fossil is USUALLY associated with the obstacles that size and disarticulation place on the "interpretation" of the skeleton. You have all, or at least a lot of the bones of a monstrous therapod, but there are two-hundred odd not counting fragments, all laid out on the museum's curation room floor. How do you relate them? Do you have sufficient skeletal material to make informed reconstructions of missing parts? Do you even know what you are doing?

          One famous incidence of this problem was a nineteenth century reconstruction of a Brontosaurid. The lead scientist worked from living reptiles and decided the posture would look like a monstrous crocodilian or monitor lizard (hey it was a reptile after all) with the legs out to the sides and the belly on or near the ground. He was congratualated by a colleague for successfully showing why dinosaurs became extinct - they died from the pain of those disarticulated joints. I think this little contrempts may be described in *The Hotblooded Dinosaurs* if you want to read about it.

          If you compare this with the Chinese find, the animal is much smaller, only a meter long. Consequently, the find can be removed in a few small pieces, rather than excavating indvidual bones and bring round the pickup. The skeleton is articulated so well that all the bones are in situ. Scarcely any assembly is required.

          If you compare the quality and detail of the skeleton, it is quite similar to finds made in parts Europe, and about which there was an article in National Geographic a few years back. The archaeopteryx was in similar condition and quality when it was discovered at a European site. The European and presumably the Chinese sites are in very fine grained shale or mudstone that has under gone minimal deformation. The bodies were buried quickly and the environment was anaerobic so that decay was slow and sufficiently incomplete to leave stains associated with trace impressions from the feathers. In other areas, notably in South America casts of dinosaur skin have been recovered. Pterosuars have been discovered so well preserved that what appears to be fur or fur- like feathers is visible.

          One other thought. In paleontology, archaeology, and related professions, fraud has often been screamed because someone's favorite ox (theory, religious belief, doctrine, etc.) had been gored by an unanticipated discovery.

          • In paleontology, archaeology, and related professions, fraud has often been screamed because someone's favorite ox (theory, religious belief, doctrine, etc.) had been gored by an unanticipated discovery.

            I don't recall saying that the NPR person was saying it was a fraud. They explicitly said the opposite.

            As for my ox being gored...god knows as a computer tech, I have such a vested interest in there being no such thing as 4 winged dinosaurs.

            • I wasn't actually thinking that you were indicating your ox was being gored. My impression was that your sources might be seriously misleading you. Fossils, as I said, come in a lot of different conditions. If they did not occasionally occur in very high quality, we wouldn't have a clue that the Archaeopteryx, for example, was feathered. I can't off hand recall the deposits in Europe where the earliest "bird" was discovered, but it is the Jura Mountains district in Germany(?) I think. Some of the material recovered there is amazing. Provided that the animal was quickly buried, the matrix is fine grained (clay to fine grained silt), and tectonics have mangled the landscape, even large animal fossils can offer amazing preservation. The Ichthyosaur Park includes an example of an adult female that died giving birth. Thus we know that they gave live birth. High quality preservation may be unusual, but not inordinately so. The worst preserved examples are usually the really large animals that have undergone serious taphonomic changes before they stabilzed. So, if the scream of fraud was your scepticism, my apologies. Scepticism is good and little salt are good. However, you may be worrying pointlessly.

        • I recently went to see the Dinobirds exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Amazingly detailed fossils, down to feather details.

          http://www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tempexhib/dinobirds/

      • Re:take this with a grain of salt (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The peer reviewers for Nature are as objective on matters of evolution as the Pope is on matters of Catholocism. There's no vested interest, of course. *cough*

    • Link to BBC story about earlier fake (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrMickS ( 568778 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:35AM (#5142106) Homepage Journal
      The BBC has a story about an earlier chinese fake here [bbc.co.uk] or here [bbc.co.uk] for text browsers.
    • I doubt this is fraud, Nature has a lengthy piece about those fossils with a lot of detail.
      Seems quite a lot of people already studied those 6 specimens.
      The Nature article [nature.com]
      • For those to lazy to read the Nature article here is the important quote:


        We carefully examined the specimens under the microscope and with high-resolution X-ray computerized tomography (CT) to test the authenticity of one of the studied specimens45 (IVPP V13352) and can guarantee the accuracy of the information that we provide in this study.

    • Well, China is a wide country and all... but it appears like the oddest dinosaurs in this world were all in China, which makes you think ;)

      I guess most species in China should be in Russia and Mongolia too (no great wall back then)

      Hmm are the russians researching in this field??
    • The fact that there have been frauds does not change the overall picture: rich finds in northern China have revolutionlazied our understanding of late dinosaurs and birds. It is now quite clear that the latter are the decendants of the former; or technically speaking bird are birds. If this is a fake no doubt it would have been uncovered by the scientific community, as happened with the NG one. Tor, eagerly awaiting $20
    • The Archaeoraptor specimen was pretty easy to tell as a fake...there were all kinds of things that didn't match up. If they had tried to do the actual science, they would have found that it's left and right wings were part/counterpart of the same wing, that the tail was displaced, and that feathers abruptly stopped when you got to the piece of rock that the tail was on. There were plenty of warning signs and the people who were looking at it (a nonscientist and Phil Currie, who has a history of being easily duped) were just fools. Had they tried to publish it in a scientific journal, the peer reviewing process would have culled it out as bad science. That was National Geographic's fault for jumping the gun.

      No, this one is pretty convincingly real, and I'd say that Nature is a much more scientific publication than National Geographic.

      But don't take my word for it. Read the damned paper. [nature.com] Maybe that's a bit more convincing than a quick soundbyte on NYTimes or CNN. Just maybe.
    • Probably just a scam to open a new shopping mall with.
    • The February 2003 issue of Discover Magazine [discover.com] had an interview with ornithologist and evolutionary biologist Alan Feduccia about this same topic. He argues that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, and talks about scores of fake fossils coming from a rumored "fossil-factory" in China. Interesting read.

    • How funny? Someone made a pretty big discovery and you called it a fake. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

  • Oh god... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Da Fokka ( 94074 )
    I feel it coming: Jurassic Park 4: Attack of the microraptors, which will be followed by Jurassic Park 5: The return of the Mircoraptors where they'll be talking, which fortunately can be reproduced by the main figure by blowing on a bomboo horn.
  • No these people are wrong, look at Dolphins, clearly Dolphins have two "wings" at the front and two at the back on the tail. This is clearly correct and my total lack of knowledge or understanding of the subject should not get in the way of this being accepted as being the correct evolutionary move from dinos to not birds but mammals. We all know that birds evolved from insects as insects are what birds eats which means birds are cannibals. ... the worrying thing is how many people have read to this stage and thought "yeah, what do all those Chinese science guys know, how long have they been doing science? Wha d'yu mean they invented printing 2,000 years before the west... and gunpowder".

    Slashdot, never let a lack of education get in the way of an opinion.
    • what do all those Chinese science guys know, how long have they been doing science? Wha d'yu mean they invented printing 2,000 years before the west... and gunpowder

      That's a pretty spurious argument if your intention is to bolster China's reputation as a scientific nation. Yes, they did invent a few things thousands of years ago, but where did the Industrial Revolution actually happen? China didn't industrialize 'til centuries later.

      They may have been "doing science" longer than most other nations, but that only means their progress/year lags far far behind the true scientific nations.

      • By that argument... (Score:3, Informative)

        by MosesJones ( 55544 )

        The UK is the most advanced country in the world, went through the Agricultural, Industrial and Communications revolutions first.

        China still leads the world in many fields of science. Their micro-surgeons are acknowledged as the best, they have the most practice thanks to a total lack of safety in the average Chinese workplace. They have some of the finest maths brains on the planet, and there are 1.2 billion of them.

        China is a scientific nation, you can't move at most scientific conferences without bumping into a large contingent who are either directly from China or who are researching in Western Unis.

        Oh wait, you know are demonstrating how people who know jack shit about a subject and are never going to go to a scientific conference or get published in nature still think their opinions are valid even if based on a total lack of knowledge.

        Sorry I nearly missed your wonderful example of irony.

        Stem cell research in China [nature.com] one of 32 matches for Beijing university in natures publications. How many people from _your_ alma mater have been published in Nature ?
        • China is a scientific nation, you can't move at most scientific conferences without bumping into a large contingent who are either directly from China or who are researching in Western Unis.

          Yes, but why, if China is so scientific, do they have to come to the West to actually do their research?

          I'm not down on the Chinese people, but China as a nation has historically not been a great place to innovate from. Could be down to Communism, could be Confucian tradition, could be simply the sheer size of China made collaboration difficult.

          How many people from _your_ alma mater have been published in Nature ?

          A search for UCL [ucl.ac.uk] gives 112 matches on that site. Off the top of my head, UCL ranks second in the world (behind Harvard) for volume of research publications in all fields. You were saying?

        • The UK is the most advanced country in the world, went through the Agricultural, Industrial and Communications revolutions first.

          Umm, I'm British, and even I can't let this one go through unchallenged.

          Whilst we may have been world leaders in the industrial revolution, the communication revolution I'm not too sure on. For a start,I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'commiunication revolution'. However, looking at the first real mass-communication revolution, the telegraph, this was not a UK-led invention. Much of the innovation was based on Morse's experiments in telegraphy. Whilst the UK's perceived global domination at the time meant they were very much interested in this new technolgoical medium, they didn't necessarily lead it.
          • And who invented the telephone? Yeah, that's right, an American, Alexander Graham Bell. Who invented electrical lighting? Some might say Tesla with his wacky DC lights that never caught on, but for now let's say Edison.

            The UK has been the follower since the Industrial revolution, using tech invented by Americans. Don't pride yourself on ignorance, pride yourself on facts. :)
            • I thought Edison invented DC, and (because of his ego) refused to acknowledge Tesla's AC was a more efficient means of public electrical delivery... so Tesla quit working for Edison & moved to Westinghouse.
            • One trusts that this isn't representative of the current crop of American science graduates...

              If you study science, you may notice that industrial countries do not progress in line.

              The UK, and other countries outside the USA, have been responsible for a huge number of advancements since the industrial revolution. The jet engine, cavity magnetron (microwaves), radar, LCDs...

              And for the record:

              1. Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish

              2. Joseph Swann demonstrated the electric light in England some months before Edison

            • but for now let's say Edison

              Or lets say it was Swan, form the UK, who beat Edison hands down, forcing Edison to go into partnership with him in the Edison Swan Electric Light Co.

              Don't pride yourself on ignorance, pride yourself on facts.

              How ironic.

              TWW

    • Re:Four Wings and Dolphins... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by iainl ( 136759 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:40AM (#5142117)
      This isn't about doubting the Chinese ability to perform genuine science - the problem is the well documented ability of Chinese fossil smugglers to invent new fake fossils in order to make large quantities of cash.
  • "with a cool rendering of what it possibly looked like"

    Cool wasn't exactly the first word that sprung into my mind when I saw it ;)

  • Reg-free link (Score:5, Informative)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:00AM (#5141993) Homepage
    Fly over here, you bastards and get your reg-free link [nytimes.com]

    Four winged freaks!
    • Sigh. NYTimes requires Javascript to pop up the picture of this beast.

      Here's a direct link to the graphic. [nytimes.com]

      -

      • Re:Reg-free link (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
        Hmm, it looks suspiciously like those wacky little dragons the Chinese have been crazy about forever. Maybe there's some truth to the whole dragon thing after all. A wise man once said there's a grain of truth in every bushel of myth.

  • Dragons next ? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Sh0t ( 607838 )
    Wow maybe that means dragon did walk the earth and we just haven't found the proof of it yet. I wouldn't be too surprised if they found some evidence of such, seems too consistant a fixture in stories to be 100% fiction. Sigh... Dinosaurs would have made great pets imho.

    • Re:Dragons next ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by bdeclerc ( 129522 )
      Actually, Dinosaur bones are thought to be an important cause of the "Dragon" myths, people have been finding dino bones for many hundreds of years. They are also used to explain the basic folklore about Giants.
      Dragons as shown in modern stories and films show little to no resemblance to the early "dragons" (chinese dragons are more like snakes with short legs)
    • Don't be silly. Dragons evolved from fish. They had a flight bladder in which water was electrolysed to make hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen was exhaled, where it caused spontaneous combustion of almost anything it touched, and the hydrogen was stored. Compressing the hydrogen sack controlled altitude, and the wings were used for acceleration and steering.
      Never very populous they were hunted to extinction over a thousand years ago. Fossils are unlikely to be found since a ruptured flight bladder caused the dragon to burst into flames, destroying all evidence.
  • I guess that dinosaurs are also dragonfiles' ancestors, too :)

  • For the German speakers (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wirr ( 157970 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:24AM (#5142072)
    here is a link to the article in German from "Der Spiegel":
    The article [spiegel.de]

  • No name yet? (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrianWCarver ( 569070 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:36AM (#5142109) Homepage
    None of the articles gave a name for this thing yet.

    So, here we have it...

    Slashdot's own Name that New Dinosaur Contest:

    1. Glideasaurus
    2. GNAB (GNAB's not a bird)
    3. Quadrofoil
    4. I don't have a name yet you Insensitive Clodasaurus.
    5. Fakeoraptor
    6. Cowboydactyl Nealasaurus.

    BWC

  • As others have suggested it may be a fake... I'd be inclined towards it being at least a genuine fossil (once bitten ;-) though the interpretation on it may be open to question.

    There is a lot of interesting stuff comming out of China. It should be remembered that the famous National Geographic fake, actually contained two seperate significant fossils [bbc.co.uk]

  • how does this thing walk around ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by heymjo ( 244283 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:01AM (#5142179)
    I can understand the microraptor would've folded his front wings onto its chest or something , like normal birds do when they aren't flying. But if your feet act as wings as well then it cannot be comfortable walking around with those. What if they get muddy or wet ?
    There are birdspecies nowadays with feathered legs and the feathers on them look all battered, muddy and broken, definitely unsuitable to fly around with.
    • Good point, but how much time does a modern tree lizard spend on the ground?
      • good point .. but then my question changes to : how does a tree lizard with "arm" wings and "leg" wings climb around comfortably ? It probably didn't, so evolution dropped them. But that raises the interesting question : why did evolution create such a thing ? Where these just plain birds originally, some with an inclination to stay in trees longer than others ?
        • As another poster pointed out, the feathered limbs wouldn't be much more awkward than the big flaps of skin that flying squirrels have.

          Also, not to be too anal here but your use of the word evolution makes it sound as though evolution makes decisions about growing wings then losing them. That's not really how it works. Evolution makes decisions the same way that gravity does .

          The microraptors were probably just small lizards/dinos with feathers that were used more for temperature regulation and/or sexual display than movement, whose offspring x generations down the road were gliders, whose offspring y generations down the road were more birds than dinos, whose offspring z generations down the road were chicken fricasee.

    • Re:how does this thing walk around ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cyrek ( 556620 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:22AM (#5142422) Homepage
      Evolution tends to follow similar paths in similar situations.

      The article suggests that the Microraptors might have 'flown' like flying squirrels do. Since the squirrels have no problems getting around, I guess the 'raptors had no trouble.

      Mammals have developed two forms of flight - the modified hand as a wing in Bats and the three flaps of skin between limbs used by some Squirrels.

      It stands to reason to assume that if Birds today use the modified hand method, that there might have been some other dinosaur subspecies that used the other method.
  • While the RIAA claims the dinosaur had four wings it actually had only ONE wing that it could wag around REALLY quickly.
    • While the RIAA claims the dinosaur had four wings it actually had only ONE wing that it could wag around REALLY quickly./I?

      And the other three wings were pirated copies....

  • 4 - Winged Dinosaur a Mistake (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blnky ( 35330 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:31AM (#5142233)
    Update: 6:30 AM, Scientists determine that the original analysis was erroneous and that it is, in fact, two separate winged dinosaurs on top of each other. This reassessment was prompted when archeological interns in the field discovered a fossilized truck with fossilized skid marks approximately 30 meters away.
  • In the past years those defending evolution have felt increasing pressure to find "in betweens" in the fossil records, to prove the theroy of gradualism.

    Our current view of the fossils, with huge gaps between changes in the populations supports the idea of punctuated equalibrium. This gets the creationists excited, because they think that instant changes must come from a higher being. Thus, there has been tremendous pressure to find these transitonary species.

    This pressure may cause scientists to misinterpet fossil records, or even create false fossils. I wouldn't become to excited about this find.

    • Actually, punctuated equilibrium is gradualism, just a look on gradualism over a short time. Basically, it means gradualistic changes in an organism resulting in rather large morphological changes in a relatively(for the fossil record) short time. Usually it is believed that smaller populations would be required for such changes to become 'fixed' in the population. The creationist conjecture comes in with molecular biology and the fact that the kind of changes occuring in this time require either a large population or a large amount of time to have a likelyhood of occuring. The essence of the argument is that it is an example of where the fossil record and molecular biology disagree.

  • Big pictures of it (Score:5, Informative)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:26AM (#5142437) Homepage
    National Geographic [nationalgeographic.com] has some good big pictures / illustrations of it.
  • What's so amazing about this?

    Every time I go to KFC, I get the 4-winged chicken!

    Ha ha haha aaaahh.

  • Does evolution work in a direction? No. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:47AM (#5142557)

    The suggestion is that dinosaurs went through a gliding stage before learning to fly with two fore-limbs, says Dr Angela Milner of London's Natural History Museum.

    This sort of quote assumes that evolution is going in a single direction -- "from" flightless dinos "to" modern birds. In fact traits commonly appear, and disappear, and reappear, many times. (Take a look at a "terror bird" [bbc.co.uk] and convince yourself birds weren't turning back into dinosaurs.)

    It sounds like the world had a mess of different uses for feathers, once they developed -- insulatory, locomotion, display, and so on, just like in modern birds, and some we haven't thought of like this four-legged gliding model, if the fossil's real. Dinosaurs didn't develop "toward" flight, they bounced all over that range of feather uses just like birds do today.

    Cladistics [berkeley.edu] will air out that sort of thinking real fast. (Decent practical primer/pop science book: "In Search of Deep Time.")

    Looking at things in "clades" also helps in practical ways by showing the evolutionary relationships between living animals more clearly. People trying to figure out ways to treat tapeworms had trouble making progress under the assumption that their on parasitism evolved only once, in a common anscestor of all modern tapeworms. Cladistics hashed out the evolutionary history of tapeworms a bit, and we realized the trait had a more patchy history -- parasitism had evolved several separate times -- and that some of the closest modern relations weren't parasitic at all. Those modern relations were easier to work with in the lab than something that required a host.

  • Every time a trilobite dies a microraptor get's its (four) wings!

    ...ahem.



    blakespot

  • It can't be a link between birds and dinosaurs, because it's a fossil from the future! That animal planet show about speculating evolution (referenced in a slashdot article here [slashdot.org]) said that 4-winged birds are yet to come.

    I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where they find a fossil of an angel. "The end is here. The end of high prices!"

    Find a few more specimens and it will be easier to insert into our understanding of how the progression took place. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    -transiit
  • I hear that there's a new shopping center opening in Springfield.
  • Birds have 2 sets of paired appendages. 2 wings and 2 feet. An extra set of paired appendages makes this organism very different form a bird. In addition dinosaurs also only had 2 sets of paired appendages so this thing probobly didn't evolve form a dinosaur either.
  • That Boeing beat the Wright Brothers in being the first in flight.


    (Yeah, yeah, I know, bad joke, even by my standards, which weren't all that high to start with.)


    There are still arguments as to whether -ANY- of the fossils with "feathers" found are genuine, whether the feathers are merely scales that fossilised, or whether (even if they were feathers) they were even used, and were merely a genetic anomoly that died out.


    That's a lot of debate, and it's not going to be settled any time soon. Especially when finds are made in politically dubious times. (Don't pretend that all of the suspicion of the Chinese is due to the Chinese end of things. Other countries have a political stake in this.)


    The main problem is that paleantology has become increasingly open to both fraud and cynics. As it is a science in which findings are very hard to verify (not everything fossilises, and not all areas are good for fossilization, making it very hard to duplicate results).


    Another problem is scientists speaking outside their fields of expertise. Geologists have no business speculating on the nature of flight, with the SOLE exception of when they can produce a complete physical replica and can carry out hard science on that replica.


    The nature of flight and wings is the sole preserve of specialists in aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. Unless people in these fields get involved, any guesswork by a geologist is of no greater significance than any Joe Blogg opinion. That it has the "respectability" of a degree or two attached makes it dangerous, because people will count the number of letters as an indication of truth, rather than whether the person has any clue of what they're talking about.

    • Re:This proves, once and for all... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bicoid ( 631498 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @01:26PM (#5144574)
      There are still arguments as to whether -ANY- of the fossils with "feathers" found are genuine, whether the feathers are merely scales that fossilised, or whether (even if they were feathers) they were even used, and were merely a genetic anomoly that died out.

      You need desperately to stop reading Feduccia and believing everything he says as undeniable truth. The guy does piss-poor paleontology (ask any paleontologist and they'll tell you the same thing). He doesn't even publish in peer-reviewed papers...he writes books which are NOT peer reviewed. As far as I'm concerned, HE'S the fraud.

      But about the feathered dinosaurs. The whole "scales or connective tissue" argument is long-dead. That argument was used against Sinosauropteryx because the only feathers it had was a small amount of "dinofuzz." Dinofuzz has not been proven to be feathers, but it seems likely that it is indeed protofeathers. Since Sinosauropteryx, however, we've found MANY more feathered dinosaurs, many of which indeed have true feathers. Some of these have been found by paleontologists as opposed to villiagers and are therefore unaltered. Microscopic analysis of the feathers shows a LOT of detail in structures that we find in the feathers found in, say, Confucisornis and other birds found in the Liaoning beds.

      The infamous Archaeoraptor debacle was NOT as big a problem as you would think. There were two seperate animals stuck together...a composite specimen made up of a bird and a Microraptor. The guy who found it AT A ROCK AND GEM SHOW(who was NOT, I repeat, NOT a paleontologist but rather a dinosaur fanatic who wanted his name on a paper) took it straight to National Geographic and had all sorts of stuff done with it LONG before the whole thing was even looked at in more detail. This was a result of bad science, not the convincing value of the composites/fakes coming out of China.

      Another problem is scientists speaking outside their fields of expertise. Geologists have no business speculating on the nature of flight, with the SOLE exception of when they can produce a complete physical replica and can carry out hard science on that replica.


      No offense or anything, but you, sir, are an ignorant fool. Most paleontologists are NOT trained primarily in geology. Many have specialized in comparative anatomy, developmental biology, and other areas that are more important to understanding the morphology of the animals they study. I've even met a few paleontologists who DO have a good background in aerodynamics or structural engineering so they can understand what the animals they're looking at could and could not do. Don't think all paleontologists are geologists who pick up fossils, name them, and make up unfounded stories as to the animal's behavior.
  • Is this what they found? Is it just me or does this disturbing logo [americanbodybuilding.com] have a tiny pair of "hind wings"?
  • But any word on how many asses it has?

  • anythings possible (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here's a pic of a frog with 6 legs [state.mn.us]
  • thank god for evolution!
  • A thing that amazes us, here in Europe, is the influence of creationists in the USA. Here in Europe, claiming to be creationnist and doubting every paleontologist discovery is view as mediaval backwardness. Only marginal religious sects, representing 0.1% of the population claim to be creationist. For us, contesting the evolution theory is like contesting the fact that le Earth is round and rotates around the Sun. The evolution debate is closed everywhere, expect in USA. How such a modern country can be so influenced by religious fondamentalist group ? That is the main reason of the growing gap across the Atlantic.
    • The problem with most americans (being an american myself) is that they dont understand the differences between evolution and the Big-Bang theory. They tend to envelope them in one catagory. I am a college student and have taken several biology courses and it amazes me to see the quantitiy of people that get worked up over evolutionary concepts and proofs. They dont realize that evolution is real and it is happening right now. As for me I believe in god but i also belive in evolution and i dont think there is anything wrong or incorrect about my beliefs and convictions.
    • The evolution debate is closed everywhere, expect in USA.

      I think your overstating things a bit here. Genetic change in populations over time has been closed for a long time. But any further details that evolution encompasses are still in quite active debate. Particularly phylogentic/caldistic analysis are still a hot topic. Fossil/morphology based trees are at odds with molecular based trees in several key locations. Mechanisms and models are also still under heavy debate, molecular evidence is still at odds with puncuated equilibrium. The mass of conflicting evidence and theories that evolution encompasses right now easily matches the amount of 'agreed upon' evidence and interpretations. To call this debate closed(even with regards to common descent), severly underestimates the complexity of our origins.
  • A 4 winged dinosaur...phhht...I have 3 legs. *cough* *cough*

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