What drove bird evolution?

Isn't that a claim debunked by the existance of birds without beaks?Of course, they have claws on their wings. But one hardly has to posit a beak as necessary for flight.

Perhaps he's referring to some ability birds have to let air from their lungs flow out their anuses.They would be much like Redwolf himself in this regard, if they could do that.

Why do flightless birds have them, then? Not same thing. Not all birds have beaks, remember?

How about those stick insects, that evolved wings, lost them, and then evolved them again? I wasn't aware there was a selection pressure on chickens for flight.How about that beak thing? You keep ignoring the fact that not all birds had beaks.Oh, and if you're going to talk about that ridiculous fiction of "changing gravity", do you suppose that you could address my standing rebuttals in the thread in which we discussed it? Thanks...This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-14-2004 02:50 PM

Remind me not to hire you in any research capacity.You're telling me you've never heard of Archaeopteryx, the most famous prehistoric bird? Here's a link you can go to you rectify your most unfortunate ignorance: All About ArchaeopteryxAs you can see, Archaeopteryx has no bill. Then why were you so woefully impotent when it came to substantiating your claims in the other thread? Hell, I'm no expert, but I single-handedly rebutted your sauropod arguments. I note that my rebuttal has recieved no substantial response from you to date.

Archaeopteryx, of course.Moreover, every fetal bird lacks a beak; first they grow tooth buds. These buds have no connection to any beak feature in any bird but are present, prenatally, nonetheless.The simplest explanation for them is the evolutionary one; i.e. that birds are descended from organisms who had teeth and not bills.

Sure. Since the "genetic engineer" you refer to can only be natural processes, you've essentially repeated the evolutionary explanation with different language.Birds indeed were "genetically re-engineered" in the same way a lot of engineers are engineering things these days - natural selection and random mutation.

Because the only two observed entities with the design power to do the job are natural processes and humans, and humans simply weren't there at the time. Right, fabricated by natural processes.

Most of the literature I've read classifies it as bird and not dinosaur, but it's sufficiently transitional that there's no simple way to choose where to put it.That, of course, is the strongest argument for evolution, and also the strongest argument against Redwolf's position - either Archaeopteryx is a bird who lacks many of the features RW claims birds couldn't survive without, or it's a non-bird with many of the features RW claimed would be survival liabilities in a non-bird.

Are you kidding?The guy who spearheaded the operation says that it was his village's cottage industry. Moreover, read the story of their "discovery":

quote:

---

Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea, received a small carved rock as a gift for his birthday. The carving looked ancient but when Dr. Cabrera saw it the first thing he thought was that it was a drawing of an extinct fish.

​

From that moment on, hearing of the extreme interest that the good doctor showed for that rock, local natives approached him with the fantastic news that if he wanted more stones they had a few and could sell them to him.

---

from Page not found | Skeptical InquirerSo, in fact your claim is quite incorrect; they did know that at least one gullible gringo (besides yourself) wanted them and would pay for them. It wasn't simply speculation; it was their direct observation.The stones have never been dated so it's impossible to say when they were carved. Moreover, the pictures on them are not accurate depictions of dinosaurs, generally, but rather about what you'd expect if the only dinosaur you ever saw was on TV or in a kid's book:

quote:

---

As compensation for these shortcomings, however, one could read a very revealing interview with a Basilio Uchuya and his wife, Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana, two peasants from Callango, published some years ago by Mundial magazine (Anonymous 1975). In it, Basilio and Irma admit that all of the stones they sold to Cabrera they had carved themselves. As for the subjects to be depicted on the stones it was easy: they chose illustrations from comic books, school books, and magazines.

---

But here's the thing - none of the Ica stones are carved:

quote:

---

Cabrera objected that andesite is too hard to carve well by mere mortals using stone tools. "True," says Carroll in his entry on the Ica stones, "but the stones are not carved. They are graved, i.e., a surface layer of oxidation has been scratched away.

---

There's certainly nothing difficult about using sandpaper and other tools to grind off a layer of soft oxidation. As for the appearance of "ancient age":

quote:

---

That yellowish, ancient layer that covered the stones was as easily obtained, said Basilio: once the etching was done, the stones were placed in a poultry pen and chickens did the rest.

---

So, in other words, the source of the stones' apparent age, much like the rest of your claims and your general behavior on this board, is chicken shit.

This simply isn't a substantial refutation. The stones aren't carved, they're graved. Graving is a simple matter and it certainly wouldn't have taken an entire villiage "23 years" to engrave all these stones, particularly with modern tools and sandpaper, the marks of which were found on the stones.Your article substantiates the stones in absolutely no tangible way. That they are forgeries is the inescapable conclusion of anyone with sense.

What on Earth would that have to do with anything? Maybe you didn't read the bibliography at the bottom of the article:

quote:

---

References
Anonymous. 1975. "Confront: . . . Las hizo Basilio Uchuya." Mundial, No. 6, January 17.

​

Cabrera Darquea, Javier. No date. The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica. Ica: Privately Printed.

​

Carroll, Robert Todd. 2002. "The Ica Stones," in: The Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com/icastones.html).

​

Chauvet, Jean-Marie, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, and Christian Hillaire. 1996. Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave: The Oldest Known Paintings in the World. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

​

Polidoro, Massimo. 2002. "A Pterodactyl in the Civil War." Skeptical Inquirer, 26(3), May/June 2002: 21-23.

---

These are the sources you must address, not CSICOP.

There's no such dinosaur. As someone once said "Once somebody's been shown to be an ideologue and a liar, you don't have to go on checking his pronouncements... " Oh, right - just like this picture must be fake:After all, holding that arm out must involve millions of foot-pounds of torque. That's simply not possible under our current gravity, right? Then what is that a picture of?

The problem is, these aren't the pronouncements of CSICOP. They were merely compiled by that organization.These are the sources you must rebut:

quote:

---

References
Anonymous. 1975. "Confront: . . . Las hizo Basilio Uchuya." Mundial, No. 6, January 17.

​

Cabrera Darquea, Javier. No date. The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica. Ica: Privately Printed.

​

Carroll, Robert Todd. 2002. "The Ica Stones," in: The Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com/icastones.html).

​

Chauvet, Jean-Marie, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, and Christian Hillaire. 1996. Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave: The Oldest Known Paintings in the World. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

​

Polidoro, Massimo. 2002. "A Pterodactyl in the Civil War." Skeptical Inquirer, 26(3), May/June 2002: 21-23.

---

That's simply a false claim. Sauropod necks did indeed have structural cables to handle those torque loads. They're called "tendons."So, we're pretty much back to where we were in the other thread. I predict you'll stop responding to my posts because that's exactly what you did the last time we got to this point - I had destroyed your sauropod claim, and you had no rebuttal except to mention how you don't talk to idiots, or some such.Does it ever bother you that what is apparently your life's work can be so easily destroyed by punk kids on the internet with no college degree, like myself? Man, that would burn me up.