Notice the very clever title on AIG!

Gotta hand it to them, their title-game is strong.

AstroAg17 said:

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It's never "I read this here and it says X". They always try to pass it off as their own thought even when you ask. Like when oldarmy1 (maybe?) claimed to have PhD's in math and physics.

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Well, that site is basically a text book, so they just state it as fact.

TampaBayAg said:

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AstroAg17 said:

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Can you walk me through the thought process that lead to your post?

Did you come up with it or did you read it somewhere else? Do you honestly think that the very existence of unfused caudal vertebrae was overlooked by the 10+ educated people who wrote the paper, as well as the peer reviewers? Do you think that if only they had TampaBayAg on their research team, they might have noticed the most basic fact about the vertebrae that they talk about for several pages?

I'd wager that you simply copied it from some website that caters to people like you. The reason it's not classified as a bird is explicitly stated in the paper that you probably didn't read. It's not surprising that it's birdlike anyway, since it's closely related to the ancestors of birds.

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The dino-to-bird link is very much unproven and very much needed by proponents of the evolutionary theory. While this specimen is new, the premise is not. I'm just an avian geek and nothing more. I'll let you scientists (aka, anyone who's taken a semester of BIOL 214) return to your enlightenment session. Have a great weekend!

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Please tell me where you find 8 unfused tail vertebrae in a true bird? And please tell me how those feathers relate to flight when they are clearly not designed with flight as a possibility?

there is an entire header in the actual paper that addresses the AIG train of thought (if we want to charitably call it that).

Marco Esquandolas said:

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Be honest, Tampa. Did you actually read the paper? Or did you go straight to AIG so that you wouldn't have to challenge your brain by reading actual science by actual scientists?

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Marco, I did read it. I also read AIG (which Ham did focus on the fact that this is an incomplete fossil specimen and should we really call this a dinosaur given the short sample and location, but I thought I went a little further).
In addition to AIG (which is the best in terms of evangelism, there are some better suited Christian research institutions when is comes to metaphysical apologetics from a creationist worldview, such as ICR and Dr. Jason Lisle).

I don't know if you all are familiar with Dr. Alan Feduccia or not, but he did some guest lecturing at TAMU a little over a dozen years ago. He's a renown ornithologist and a well published evolutionary biologist ( I should preface that he is an atheist and not a Christian, so he cannot simply be written off as an "idiot" that "fears science"). He has written several interesting books, which include studies on the origin of flight, the structure and evolution of vertebrae, and the primary evolution of birds.

The feathered dinosaur may have existed, but Feduccia does not believe there is a ancestry link between dinosaur and birds. There's a Confuciusornis specimen named for Dr. Feduccia and he uses it in his research and publications as he has negated other discovered dinosaur feather fossil remnants, which co-existed with his specimen. If nothing more, Dr. Feduccia's ornithology work is both entertaining and impressive, and worthy of the read for anyone that has an interest in birds. However, when you couple with the fact that he's an evolutionary biologist that denies the Theropod Hypotheses, he's made a hell of a lot of enemies in academia (but is a brilliant researcher, nonetheless and I admire him for not caving on his antithesis position)

Cosmos published an article last year on the feathered dinosaur fossil hoaxes (and / or false findings and publications) through either fake fossils or faulty paleontology. Anyone remember Sinosauropteryx among others? This paleontologist group might be legit, but this is hardly the first feathered dinosaur proclamation.

Sorry for my original post coming across as trolling and the .gif was probably not a good idea, and added nothing to the discussion. Thanks Sapper for starting this thread. I don't agree with much you post, but you generally do so in an amicable way and I didn't add much to the discussion in my fly by posting (was doing so in the middle of playing with my kids and ministering to a friend that has cancer.....Insert sympathy plea here....haha).

In all seriousness, I will personally send a copy of Dr. Feduccia's books (and maybe a KJV Bible might find its way into the package ...) to anyone that is interested in reading one or more. I recommend any of these:

• Riddle of the Feather Dragons
• The Origin and Evolution of Birds
• Structure and Evolution of Vertebates

Okay, off to church. Happy Lord's Day, everyone!

There are major, major problems with Feduccia's work and he's taken seriously by almost no one in ornithology or paleontology.

Since we're on the subject, can anyone explain what distinguishes a dinosaur from a prehistoric bird, or at least explain what the most common system is for distinguishing the two?

Do you have Manhart by chance?

Dr. Watson said:

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There are major, major problems with Feduccia's work and he's taken seriously by almost no one in ornithology or paleontology.

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He's an elected fellow to the American Ornithologists' Union and a continuing contributor to both the The Open Ornithology Journal and pee-reviewed Ornithological Society journal (The Auk).

TampaBayAg said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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There are major, major problems with Feduccia's work and he's taken seriously by almost no one in ornithology or paleontology.

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He's an elected fellow to the American Ornithologists' Union and a continuing contributor to both the The Open Ornithology Journal and pee-reviewed Ornithological Society journal (The Auk).

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Yes, in the 1970s and 80s, when he started, his ideas were standard for evolutionary ornithologists. His modern ideas that theropod Dinosaurs are actually birds that lost the ability to fly and evolved to resemble Dinosaurs is completely without merit or support and he has zero fossil evidence to show a non-Dinosaurian archosaur ancestry for birds.

dargscisyhp said:

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Since we're on the subject, can anyone explain what distinguishes a dinosaur from a prehistoric bird, or at least explain what the most common system is for distinguishing the two?

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There's a great temporary exhibit at the American Museum called "Dinosaurs Among Us" that charts the evolution of birds and has many spectacular fossils of everything from Yutyrannus to Velociraptor to Microraptor to Citipati to Confuciusornis. They use a dial with true Dinosaur on one end and true bird on the other. And they don't reach true bird until you get to the more modern species. So, culling out a dividing line is almost impossible. A bird typically must have hollow bones, feathers, a wishbone (furcula), a synsacrum, a beak, and a pygostyle. The last three are rarely found in what we normally think of as Dinosaurs, though intermediate forms have variations on them.