Birds and Reptiles

you are clearly out of the loop, as we are continually finding more evidence that demonstrates the accuracy of harry potter.
(source)

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and tails! i don't know if the experiment was ever peer-reviewed, but hans larsson apparently managed to make chickens grow very dinosaurian tails. it basically comes down to "ornithologists can't count", which isn't really all that technical.Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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ruben, martin, and feduccia are crackpots. alleging conspiracy is the last resort of crackpots. if they had evidence they think that other paleontologists don't want to see, they should submit to journals and subject it to peer review. science does not work by hiding evidence that falsifies things; it works by intentionally seeking out. nobel prizes are given for research that overturn established theories.instead, they submit papers that don't even say anything about birds, or come to illogical conclusions. like the business where they claim to prove that the avian lung couldn't have evolved from even early birds, and this disproves the dinosaurian evolution of birds because.... well they don't seem to know, either. but they'll sure trumpet it in the news.now, all of their concerns have actually been addressed, and they continue in the same vein. perhaps it's really them who refuse to see evidence. oh, and a correct to an above statement. it's not that they don't believe theropods are dinosaurs, it's that they don't believe maniraptors are theropods. which is even more phenomenally stupid. buz, i think it's pretty clear that a lot of the participants of this thread actually have checked it out. journalists like controversy, because it makes a story more engaging. and this is the primary problem with science journalism -- the journalists often try to bolster controversy where there really isn't any. those guys i mentioned above? they are really the only working paleontologists who question the dinosaurian origin of birds. and one of them isn't a paleontologist. there is no controversy. these guys are cranks. if you talk to scientists, they'll use the term sauropsid. birds are sauropsids. "reptile" is a colloquial term, and really has not scientific meaning. it's paraphyletic, and not related to any clade. birds are not reptiles because the colloquial term "reptile" is defined to exclude birds. that's it. it has no bearing on the scientific status of birds and their relation to "reptiles" through dinosaurs. in any case, quite a lot of paleontologists will argue that "reptile" shouldn't include dinosaurs either. considering that every time you've said "debatable" you've actually meant "yes", well. it's a good thing that you've also always been wrong.Edited by arachnophilia, : forgot sig

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the biblical exodus is not the topic of this thread. please take those comments somewhere where they are on topic. i'm interested in discussing dinosaurian evolution here.in any case, the studies you cited above that were on topic were indeed written by scientists, as were the quotes in the press releases. those scientists happen to be hacks, and are the ones who only see what they want to see -- as evidenced by my posts above. the rest of the scientific community, in those cases, has gone in and falsified most (all?) of their claims. i hesitate to say "all" because some of their research doesn't even actually say what they claim it does in news.someone on another message board related the following story:

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Reminds me of the 2002 SVP. I witnessed Greg Paul accosting Larry Martin in the hallway and asking him what he had to say now that we know dromaeosaurs had feathers.

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Larry: "Well, then they're not dinosaurs. They can't be dinosaurs, because if they had feathers that means they're living in the trees". (quote is not exact, but that's what he said)

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my "ideological version of science" is called science. denial of evidence, hand waving, special pleading, and just plain willful ignorance is not. double standard, and a particularly insidious one at that. you have lots of problems accepting what every other scientist says. you only appeal to these crackpots because you think they are somehow arguing against evolution: they're not; just which particular path it took. and remember -- feduccia is an ornithologist. dinosaurs are not his field of study. he is not especially qualified to comment on paleontological concerns, like numbering in maniraptoran digits.and these guys are not "bonafide" scientists, because they are committed to a particular point of view a priori, and attempt to reinterpret all evidence into fitting that view. they are then forced the discard the evidence that simply falsifies their views. this is not science -- but it sounds a lot like creationism, so i can see the appeal it has for you.now, i have demonstrated several instances where these things have happened above. and, i have fully addressed precisely why this stuff is bunk, with quotes from actual bonafide scientists who are respected in their field. and with pictures that even you can see. i will now repost two of them, with a challenge.
"figure A"

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"figure B"i'm presenting you with these two pictures without labels. now, sure, you can go and cheat and look back a page or two. but your task is to number the digitals. you can do simply in text, ie: "A: 7,8,9. B:13,17,102" (those are obviously not the right numbers).

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this, of course, is a basic logical fallacy. all it takes is one person doing science to disprove or substantially impact a standing theory. the problem is not that these are the minority, though considering that there's about a half-dozen of them total in a field of hundreds of thousands working paleontologists certainly doesn't make them look good. the problem is that they're not doing science.in some respects, we might say that they are -- they're looking for falsifications of a standard theory. but they seem emotionally attached to that idea, and do not give it up or substantially alter it when they are shown wrong. and most of the actual scientific content is nonsensical (like the study that reportedly shows birds couldn't have evolved from birds) or just plain wrong -- and doesn't even generally say what they spout off in the media. sound like anyone else we know?it's not that there's only a few of them. it's that they're cranks. it only takes one -- but that one has to right. none of the cranks mentioned in this thread would agree with buz. they all accept evolution (that's macro-evolution for buz) as a fact, and are in fact arguing for a substantially large change in "kinds". none of them are creationists. they just use the same tactics.

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perhaps -- but so is pointing out that his appeal to authority is a double standard.

"his" being "buzsaw's" buz appealed (incredibly deviously and selectively) to authority. nuggin appealed to masses of authority. they're both fallacies.

there are, of course, substantial characters that group archaeopteryx with modern birds to the exclusion of other dromaeousaurids. they're just less that obvious -- and i like to play that up against the "it's just a bird!" creationist nonsense. clearly, it's a lot more than just a bird. it's a bird that's incredibly similar to non-avian dinosaurs.but yes, the line is kind of arbitrary.

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psst. placentals and marsupials live side by same in the same area: north america. it has nothing to do with locations -- it's just that australia is one of thew few places large groups of marsupials survived extinction.

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yes. opossums are from south america originally.but if current location isn't a factor, and just original location, it's not possible to make any sense whatsoever out of your ideology: at some point, all "kinds" bottleneck through a great big boat. they all lived in one area.in other words, if the local adaptation happened after the flood, your ideas are meaningless (as this is relatively identical to evolution). but if the local adaptations happened before the flood, your ideas are meaningless (as current location has no bearing on adaptation).

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okay. so location has nothing to do with it. okay.

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See also: Evolution of mammals

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hmm. marsupial reproduction is not inherent faster. it's just that so much of the time is spent in the pouch instead of the womb. one north american species of marsupial is no great diversity.

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you might want to google "kitzmiller marsupial slides". i'd post them as an argument, but they'd be off topic here. perhaps you should start a new topic.

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that's not too far off base, btw.convergently evolving a whole host of distinct marsupial features, across many different families of placentals, all of which come out to be precisely homologous to each other... well, it would be hard to accept that and evolution.also, can we have a marsupial thread? none of this really belongs in a thread about birds and reptiles.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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robert, can you please propose a marsupial thread, where you elaborate on your position regarding the relationship between placental and marsupial mammals?