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Author Topic:   Archaeopteryx and Dino-Bird Evolution
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 122 of 200 (309269)
05-05-2006 1:16 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by Nuggin
05-03-2006 11:40 PM


Re: Let's be clear
In other words - if we look at birds, there are a few key features. All birds have feathers for example. Also, only birds have feathers. So feathers is a very good indicator that something is a bird.
According to that, Archie is a bird.
in my (educated) opinion, this is a bad argument. birds are the only LIVING animals with feathers -- but are find more and more extinct ones that have them.
for instance, dilong paradoxus -- a chinese tyrannosaur -- has feathers. i would even go as far as to argue that flight feathers are not a good argument, either. looking at only the skeleton, there is almost nothing to place archaeopteryx as a bird. there many, many signs that he is related to birds. but the development of these signs are rather gradual through out theropod dinosaurs. and in my opinion, archie is still very much on the dinosaur side of the line.
but the line is a fine and debatable one. i'm not sure where i'd put sinornis, for instance. he has some of the fused bones i'm looking for as markers, if i recall.
So... is it a bird? Is it not a bird?
i say "not a bird."
but this is not an excuse for a creationist to misrepresent my argument. he's clearly related to birds, and closely related to the ancestor of all birds. there are many, many things that indicate a transition from dinosaurs to birds, and archaeopteryx is a rather obvious one.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 123 of 200 (309270)
05-05-2006 1:19 AM
Reply to: Message 121 by Quetzal
05-04-2006 11:27 AM


Re: Topic Folk
we can probably conclude that if birds developed from dinosaurs, then they derived from a non-herbivore lineage rather than an archosaur.
what?
all dinosaurs are archosaurs, and all BIRDS are archosaurs (because all birds are dinosaurs). we know birds came from bipedal meat-eating theropods -- but this is also kind of a silly point too. so did the bigger plant eaters.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 125 of 200 (309274)
05-05-2006 1:52 AM
Reply to: Message 124 by NosyNed
05-05-2006 1:32 AM


STILL not a bird
I think the line is not "fine" it is wide, very wide.
that's a good way to look at it. really, the line is artificial anyways. birds ARE dinosaurs, just a highly specialized group.
Archy is neither; if you take defining characteristics of birds but ONLY stick to what we need to separate them TODAY then archy is, (I think -- not a taxonimist) a bird.
archaeopteryx is NOT alive today, and grouping him with today's creatures would be anachronistic and silly.
if a velociraptor were alive today, we'd be just as forced to group him with birds. he'd have (i'd imagine) feathers, including wings, he'd be bipedal and warm-blooded, and his overall skeletal structure would a lot more similar to a bird's than it would be a to a crocodile's.
if we put him next to another large flightless bird, like an ostrich, we'd see alot in common. the feathers, the posture, the leg structure, the neck curve. they'd all be a little off, but we'd all agree that he's a flightless bird.
the things that group archaeopteryx with birds are features that are quite general and common to nearly all theropod dinosaurs, post-late-jurassice. wishbones, semi-lunate carpals, air-sac innards, hollow bones, hips, etc.
birds, in my opinion, do not start until the second and third digits are fully fused, the tarsels are fused, the halux is reverted, the tail ends in a pygostyle, the breast bone is large and keeled, and the snout is billed. those are the specific features i look for. and they are not present in archaeopteryx, who's anatomy is far, far more similar to velociraptor's.
people get so caught on the feathers. lots of dinosaurs had feathers. is dilong a bird? (is t. rex?)
archaeopteryx, like velociraptor, is an avian (and feathered) dinosaur, closely related (possibly ancestral) to birds.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 128 of 200 (309488)
05-05-2006 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 126 by CACTUSJACKmankin
05-05-2006 7:56 AM


Re: Archaeoraptor and Archaeopteryx
...a recent specimen which shows that it does not have a reversed hallux, which is the opposing talon feature allows birds to perch.
let's not get carried away. there are plenty of arboreal dinosaurs that do not have reversed halluxes. there are also plenty of animals that can climb trees without them -- goats come to mind.
the hallux does not solve the ground-up v. trees-down debate.
Since it wasn't a perching bird, it was probably a runner like dromeosaurids (velociraptor) which is the dinosaur group to which archaeopteryx is most closely aligned.
indeed, archaeopteryx IS a dromeosaur. but that doesn't neccessarily mean he was a runner. while much of the anatomy is the same, his build is considerably lighter than that of velociraptor.
There are several features of archaeopteryx that place it with dromeosaurids, among them is the hyperextendible second toe, which is only found in dromeosaurids.
and troodons, i believe.
If archaeopteryx isn't transitional then there is no such thing, since it is a near perfect mosaic of dinosaur and avian traits.
i would argue that your velociraptor is almost as "transitional." the transition is indicated by the WHOLE of late-jurassive early-cretaceous theropods, most of which began to take on these sets of avian traits. i think it's a rather safe bet now that all maniraptors had feathers, if not all theropods of the cretaceous.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 135 of 200 (347483)
09-08-2006 2:37 AM
Reply to: Message 132 by obvious Child
09-08-2006 1:01 AM


How many birds have:
Bones are pneumatic.
Pubic shafts with a plate-like, and slightly angled transverse cross-section
um. all of them.
How many reptiles have:
Opposable hallux (big toe).
first toe, not big toe. and not archaeopteryx. recent studies have shown that the hallux was not opposed.
Furcula (wishbone) formed of two clavicles fused together in the midline.
allosaurus had one. so did just about every theropod dinosaur afterward.
Pubis elongate and directed backward
classifying feature of dromaeosaurids. velociraptor has a nearly identically hip structure to archie.
Edited by arachnophilia, : forgot the sig!
Edited by arachnophilia, : (technical error corrected before anyone else caught it)


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 136 of 200 (347485)
09-08-2006 2:43 AM
Reply to: Message 129 by Someone who cares
09-07-2006 10:28 PM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
welcome back. i thought'd you'd left.
AND, it could be just a bird. Some birds have teeth you know... And claws on thier wings...
yeah? name some. or rather, name some that have fully formed digits that make an actual hand, and a full set of teeth, in their adult life.
the fact that ontogeny (at least partially) recapitulates phylogeny does not prove that this bird is not special -- it's actually a good verification of the evolution.
And you don't have any fossils that are transitional leading to and from Archaeopteryx, to show evolution, and to show that Archaeopteryx was anywhere in the "line" of evolution.
sure we do. people just make a lot of fuss about archaeopteryx as if it's the only dinosaur with feathers. ask any competent paleontologist, and they'll tell the odds are that every theropod dinosaur had feathers. certainly all the ones we've found with skin impressions do.


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Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 137 of 200 (347487)
09-08-2006 2:48 AM
Reply to: Message 133 by Archer Opteryx
09-08-2006 1:45 AM


Re: the great Archaeopteryx hoax
Well, if the feathers on this Microraptor are real I want my money back. I paid for a genuine Liu.
there's a subtle irony in your post i feel like elaborating on. or, perhaps, spoiling the joke so as to inform people.
the first time your microraptor turned up was, indeed, as part of a forgery. it was the back half of the infamous archaeoraptor. at the time, it was an unknown species.
so the point here is that people do indeed make fakes for money. but they make them out of parts of real feathered dinosaurs.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 138 of 200 (347488)
09-08-2006 2:50 AM
Reply to: Message 131 by Someone who cares
09-08-2006 12:12 AM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
Oh, and, by the way, what would make a reptile/bird die in the bottom of a lagoon instead of on land?
do you have a lake by your house? perhaps a beach. go down and sit by the water for a while. what kinds of animals do you see?


This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by Someone who cares, posted 09-08-2006 12:12 AM Someone who cares has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 153 by Someone who cares, posted 09-08-2006 9:58 PM arachnophilia has replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 145 of 200 (347614)
09-08-2006 7:59 PM
Reply to: Message 140 by Dr Jack
09-08-2006 5:35 AM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
sure we do. people just make a lot of fuss about archaeopteryx as if it's the only dinosaur with feathers. ask any competent paleontologist, and they'll tell the odds are that every theropod dinosaur had feathers. certainly all the ones we've found with skin impressions do.
Sadly not so. q.v Juravenator.
wow, that's news to me.
quote:
What it suggests is that feather evolution was complicated (no surprise there, actually), and that some lineages secondarily lost their feathery covering, or that there were seasonal or age-related or regional variations in feather expression.
we actually know there had to have been some secondary feather-loss, as some feathered dinosaurs actually have more feathers than modern birds, particularly on their feet. some postulate that the earliest dinosaurs had feathers, and when groups like the saurapods evolved (and got bigger) they lost the need for feathers. it's also curious that this is a small theropod.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 146 of 200 (347623)
09-08-2006 8:35 PM
Reply to: Message 139 by obvious Child
09-08-2006 4:00 AM


but the real question is how many have all of such features excluding the toe?
i was just pointing out that you had your information a little mixed up. the things that make archaeopteryx a bird are relatively minute and easy for the casual observer to miss. you can go back and see my counter-argument for why archaeopteryx is definitally a dinosaur, in response to the standard "it's just a bird" creationist argument. i can make that argument quite easily, because all of those features are obvious. the things that make it a bird are a little more technical.
a specimen that has many traits of both birds and dinosaurs would suggest that it is transitional.
modern birds have many dinosaurian traits, because birds are dinosaurs. what you're looking at as "dinosaur" traits are actually very ancient ancestral reptilian traits that many later dinosaurs lack. and "reptile" is not a very good definition of dinosaurs (nor a term used by the scientific community anymore). theropoda as a whole has many, many features that tie it very closely to birds, and dromaeosauridae as a whole has even more. there's a bit of debate about this, but some classify archaeopteryx as a basal dienonychosaur (it has the hyper-extendible second toe), and some as a kind of sister lineage.
Btw, that wasn't my question. I asked how many have all. Given that your list doesn't include all of the features, my statement of none is correct.
i just meant to point out that some of the factors on your lists were innaccurate. we can some up with a list of "bird features" and "dinosaur features" but when we get into feathered theropods, the line gets fuzzy -- and that's what indicates the transition. but transitions don't just happen with a single species. we can say archaeopteryx is (probably) ancestral to modern species, but there are a score of other very, very similar dinosaurs. so, how many birds have all these reptile features? and how many dinosaurs have all these bird features? very, very, many avian dinosaurs in the late jurassic and cretaceous, and very very many early birds.
the line between birds and other dinosaurs is so fine and made on such minute characteristics that, imho, it's rather abitrary. for instance, let's look at another dinosaur, v. mongolensis, and classify it according to your list. i'm not gonna waste your time, i'll asume that you realize it has all the "reptilian" features. here are the "bird" ones:
  • Feathers (probably check)
  • Furcula (wishbone) formed of two clavicles fused together in the midline. (check)
  • Pubis elongate and directed backward
so how many "reptiles" have all these features? i found another one. shall we do dienonychus? dromaeosaurus? utahraptor? microraptor? are these birds?
talk.origin's list is simple not all that accurate. pneumatic bones, for instance, is in totally the wrong list. name another reptile, besides theropod dinosaurs, that have them? none do. it's a feature that belongs strictly the birds, and their earliest relatives. if the plate-like, backwards pubis and furcula is on the "bird" list, pneumatized bones should be as well. all of t.o's "bird" features are found on other dinosaurs, while the REAL important classifying features on which the decision to group archie with birds are totally missing.


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 171 of 200 (347729)
09-09-2006 1:32 AM
Reply to: Message 151 by Someone who cares
09-08-2006 9:50 PM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
You're coming to me for information? Wow.
no, those are rhetorical questions. i know that there are no modern birds that lack bills, have teeth, and unfused digits forming a manus instead of a carpometacarpus (the fancy phraseology for "hands, not wings")
Hey, did you know that it is proposed to make a whole sub class of fossil birds called Odontornithes- birds with teeth? Yep. One group is Ichthyornidae.
ichthyornidae have been extinct for about 65 million years. if memory serves, they are late cretaceous and went out with the dinosaurs, although they are closely related to neornithes, modern birds.
that paper is also from 1873, when icthyornis was first found.
Hey, and as for birds with claws on their wings, we have Hoatzin, and Emus, and probably more.
*buzzer* wrong again.
hoatzin do not have claws on their wings in their adult life. they also do not have fully formed digits (the third is dimutive and partially used to the second) even in their embryonic stage. again, the fact that their embyronic stage so much resembles theropod morphology helps to demonstrate theropod ancestry -- a much better explanation than the creationist "coincidence."
i'm not sure about ratite wing claws, but if i recall, the have a singular digit, not three, and it is highly dimunitive -- not a functional hand (as specified). but yes, paleognaths retain many dinosaurian characteristics.
Like I said above, there are creatures with characteristics from several groups of animals, but that doesn't make them transitional. We don't see any evolving "transitionals", but we see them complete, as Creationists would expect.
creationists aren't very good at this game. i've played it before. "show me something between this and this" they say. when we provide them something that meets their criteria, they reject it because it's a "complete" animal, and must have been created that way. then they ask for the next half-way point, and the next, and the next, each time classifying it as "just this" or "just that." in the process, they often end up muddling up definitions (archaeopteryx is a modern bird? so is deinonychus then) and showing that things are for more related than they ever intended -- all while failing to see the lines between the dots.
you don't see a transitional? good, niether do i. archaeopteryx is a bird. and archaeopteryx is also a dinosaur. birds don't come from dinosaurs, birds are dinosaurs. the only "transition" going on is that some dinosaurs grew feathers, fused some bones, and took to the skies.
Edited by AdminAsgara, : changed img to thumbnail to fix page width


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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 172 of 200 (347730)
09-09-2006 1:36 AM
Reply to: Message 153 by Someone who cares
09-08-2006 9:58 PM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
Um, you must be lucky to live by a beach (that's what I am guessing from your post), but many of us don't, at least I don't. Nearest one is like 45 min. drive from here, so I'm not going to go out there right now.
no lakes, or any source of water nearby? do you live in a desert?
I can remember seeing seagulls, but no dino/birds flying around.
contradictory. you either see seagulls, or you don't see dinosaurs/birds flying around.
But point is, dead birds float if they land in a lake.
birds are hollow. their respiratory system, filled with air sacs, is connected directly to their pneumatized (hollow) bones. they float because they are very low density.
guess what happens when water gets into that respiratory system?
And, not all fossilized creatures lived near lagoons, how do you explain their fossilization? I say a big flood did it.
not the topic of this thread. many creatures fossilized by other means, and suprise, not all of them involve water. deserts work just as well, if not better.


This message is a reply to:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 173 of 200 (347731)
09-09-2006 2:04 AM
Reply to: Message 156 by Someone who cares
09-08-2006 10:12 PM


Re: Archaeopteryx- most likely fraud, if not, still not transitional
There are no transitional fossils with partially evolving bones or something.
what, precisely, do you expect?
for instance, modern birds have a bone called a carpometacarpus. it forms the structural base of the wing-tip. if you've ever eaten chicken, you've seen one. it's that part of the wing with so little meat on it that it's hardly worth the bother.
the carpometacarpus, a single bone in birds, is many bones in dinosaurs. theropod dinosaurs have three digits. as dinosaurs become more bird-like, these digits are extended, made more or gracile, and eventually diminish -- and fuse to the digits next to them. the hand of a dinosaur like velociraptor is a "partially evolved" bird wing. all the structures are homologous, but the bones have not fused.
I have yet to see a scale/feather transitional fossil.
feathers did not evolve from scales.
All I see is complete creatures, just like I would expect since God Created them.
i went and saw a movie last week. well, i didn't really see a movie. rather i saw about 130,000 still frames, all complete pictures. no motion actually happened on the screen.
Isn't it a bit odd that in all our fossil finds we find not ONE transitional fossil that in undebateable? You would expect to find at least a few hundred, but can't even produce one that is undebateable...
because the creationist definition of "transitional" is a logical contradiction. you define something as, basically, not existing, and then prove your definition by implimenting it.
you won't find "incomplete" animals, but rather fully functional and "complete" animals that share characteristics of animals related to them. it's only by stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of how each creature is related to the other creatures around it that you see the transitions. just like you'll never understand a movie if you just look at each individual frame.
here we have an especially obvious and shining example of a creature that clearly fits two categories. archaeopteryx's skeletal anatomy is about 99% standard dinosaurian architecture, with a few minute things that tie to ancestral birds. but it's covered with perfectly formed modern feathers, a feature of birds. it's enough of a "hopeful monster" and enough of what creationists are asking for that they like to cry "fraud!"
afterall, the best demonstration that your expectations can't possibly be fulfilled is that when something comes close, you write it off as a fake.


This message is a reply to:
 Message 156 by Someone who cares, posted 09-08-2006 10:12 PM Someone who cares has not replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 174 of 200 (347734)
09-09-2006 2:51 AM
Reply to: Message 149 by Someone who cares
09-08-2006 9:31 PM


Re: the great Archaeopteryx hoax
No, they most likely made the feather imprint seperately, then combined the two fossils. And the grain DIDN'T match, and the bubbles were left as proof of fraud work, and using some kind of camera you could see the two different colors of the pieces.
let's examine this hoax claim a little.
first, i'd like to present that there are seven archaeopteryx specimens, all with exactly identical plumage. not only does every subsequent argument here apply to all seven, but the fact that there are seven identical specimens indicates that if there was a forger, it would only have been a single individual, as they were all made by the same hand. this individual must have worked from 1861 (london specimen) to 1993 (the newest german specimen), giving him a career of at least 132 years producing hoaxes.
the other interesting point is that this then requires that every feathered dinosaur ever found is a hoax as well. every microraptor, sinornis, sinosauropteryx, claudipteryx, dilong, etc, specimen, ALL hoaxes. archaeopteryx is not the only feathered dinosaur; there's more than a dozen of them, all with multiple specimens found by independent teams, under very academic and review conditions. so you're basically alleging a gigantic scientific conspiracy, involving nearly everyone in paleontology.
now, let's look at some important facts, nicely compiled by t.o:
quote:
On the Maxburg specimen, the feathers continue under the bones and are overlain with dendrites that sometimes form within bedding planes, precluding the possibility of forgery (Charig 1986).
want to explain how the forger carved the rock under the bones, without removing them?
quote:
Tiny fractures, infilled with calcite, extend through both feathers and bones, showing that they have the same source. They also match perfectly from slab to counterslab, proving that the two fit together (Charig 1986). These fractures are invisible to normal vision; a nineteenth-century forger would not even know they existed, much less be able to replicate them.
there have been new developments in paleontology since 1861. they're quite good at detecting forgeries now, which is why things like "archaeoraptor" don't fly. we know about stuff now that they had no idea about in the 1860's -- so how in the world would a sculptor carve something microscopic and unknown?
feel free to keep reading at the t.o. page. but i'd like to emphasize one point in particular, on an artistic note. archer was probably sarcastic in his "amazing eye for art" comment, but i'm actually an art student.
the fact of the matter is that in all seven specimens, the slab and the counterslab are matched perfectly. there is simply no way to do this by hand. on a practical level, it's simply impossible. it requires a god-like degree of precision, something that humans lack neurologically. we simply are unable to match things on a microscopic level -- to prove it, try to stand perfectly still. what happens is that your brain and spinal column are in constant communication with your muscles, which are constantly self-correcting. the result is minute movement -- and this increases with muscle fatigue. the end result is that precision down the micron is simply out of human ability. we're good at gross motor ability, but fine motor ability is much, much harder the smaller you go.
precision on this level indicates a chemical process, kind of like photography. even then, with the human hand involved, no pictures i print in my darkroom are exactly identical down to the micron. even though i used the same negative, the same enlarger/lens/easel, kind of paper. my hands had to touch the equipment to reset it, and the paper i used was a physically different sheet -- so the relationship of the grain of the paper to the grain of the photo will not be identical. the only way for that happen is if both pictures were formed at the same time.
meaning, before the rock was split in two. that chemical process is called "fossilization" and the only hand involved was the hand of god. it's artistically and humanly impossible to create the conditions present in the archaeopteryx specimens.
Hesperornis is a toothed marine bird, it's not anything like a reptile/bird.
yeah? hesperorniformes lacked pneumatized bones. that (along with teeth) is a reptilian characteristic, in case you're keeping track. want another? they lack keels on their sternum. the only birds with that condition are ratites -- it's a highly dinosaurian feature. if you also take a look at the hips, they're not as flattened as birds', they look much more like dromaeosaurs.
Same with Velociraptor, just a dinosaur, I don't see any evolving parts there, and I don't think it leads to archaeopteryx in any way
velociraptor has a furcula (wishbone), semi-lunate carpals, pneumatized bones, and backwards facing pubis. those are bird features, in case you're keeping track. velociraptor also has the longest arm-leg ratio of any dinosaur, making him very very avian. as for tying him to archaeopteryx, both have the characteristic hyperextentible second toe -- suggesting that archaeopteryx was a deinonychosaur, along with velociraptor, dromaeosaurus, and deinonychus (and microraptor). archaeopteryx has skeletal anatomy nearly 100% identical to dromaeosaurs. the features that are not identical are even more bird-like.
because no creatures evolved into different creatures in the first place, they were all created, and they have variations within their kinds.
well, see, here's the key. you don't think they're related because you believe they are not related. if it's just variation within kind, velociraptor is a bird. many paleontologists are already calling him a flightless bird, because the evidence is so good that archaeopteryx (the first bird) was a basal deinonychosaur. meaning, velociraptor evolved from an animal that could fly.
You can't even prove that any of those creatures even had offspring!
the birds and the bees and the flowers and trees.
I'm only offering all the possibilities, it could be just a reptile, just a bird, or a fraud, which is what I think it is. But there are just as many arguments for it being just a bird or just a reptile. BUT NOT BOTH!
don't be silly. it's a dinosaur, even a sauropsid, but not a reptile.
reptiles are cold-blooded. the first dinosaurs were all bipedal (even earliest sauropods, btw), as was archaeopteryx and every other theropod dinosaur (by definition). name me another cold-blooded bipedal animal.
Edited by arachnophilia, : typo
Edited by arachnophilia, : now that anglagard is pointing s1wc back here, again, i've noticed some more typos. i really should proofread better


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 Message 149 by Someone who cares, posted 09-08-2006 9:31 PM Someone who cares has not replied

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 Message 175 by MangyTiger, posted 09-09-2006 3:16 PM arachnophilia has replied

  
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 180 of 200 (347823)
09-09-2006 5:38 PM
Reply to: Message 175 by MangyTiger
09-09-2006 3:16 PM


Re: the great Archaeopteryx hoax
name me another cold-blooded bipedal animal.
Anne Coulter.
touche.
velociraptor also has the longest arm-leg ratio of any dinosaur
To somebody like me who doesn't know too much about paleontology (would desperately love to but life gets in the way of having enough time) that's quite surprising. The obvious guess would be Tyrannosaurus rex or one of the other giant bipedal carnivores with little arms.
no no, longest arms.
I don't know why but I just love that idea. It just shows what amazing paths the undirected process of evolution leads to given enough time.
the boundary between birds and other dinosaurs is really fuzzy. there's some though that early dinosaurs fluctuated between flying and non-flying forms, and early birds might have evolved from several different lineages of dinosaurs. modern birds all come from something like gansus, but where do the opposite birds come from? you also have to remember that birds were highly, highly modern as early as the cretaceous, so the latest dinosaurs were living alongside essentially modern birds.
Alternatively it shows how incredibly complex the history of life on earth is and how difficult it is for us to reconstruct it properly from the snapshots we find in the fossil record.
we've got a lot of information, yes, but it's hard to put together a good picture of what happened. it's clear there was a transition, and we have some idea what's related to what, but the tree looks to be very complex indeed.


This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by MangyTiger, posted 09-09-2006 3:16 PM MangyTiger has not replied

  
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