Where are all the missing links?

there's some debate over the functionality and purpose of feathers originally. the "gliding" hypothesis is not generally accepted by everyone.for instance, feathers appeared to have developed first in small gournd-based theropods for warmth and/or display. flight seem to have developed from the ground up, so to speak.

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actually, there's not. the discoveries are rather recent. we have a species with down, a species with long hair-like feathers, a species with vanes, a species with symmetric nearly modern feathers without barbules and one with asymetric ones with barbules. that's pretty much all of the steps. not much mystery involved anymore. no, they really don't. they're so tiny that any "lift" effect wings would have would be negligable, if even present. i think they're not built like raptor arms, that move in an action very similar to flapping. you kind of have to remember exactly how disproportionately small t. rex's arms were. he couldn't even reach his mouth with them. no, there isn't a set path. those are pretty hard to find in the fossil record. archaeopteryx may not be a direct ancestor of modern birds, but it's definitally transitional in the right direction. certainly it shares a common ancestor with modern birds, and it's more closely related to that ancestor than birds today.

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you mean bats? lol. it's a good case for bats, probably. (i don't actually know this one. anyone?) well, it's not totally rules out. there are some feathered dinos that seem to have been arboreal. microraptor seems to have jumped from tree to tree -- and as such has FOUR wings.but the main path to flight seems to have been from the ground. leg feathers are pretty uncommon even in later arboreal feathered dinos (as some has suggested archaeopteryx is). sort of an evolutionary dead end, not the source.

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oh dear, have i ever. a popular theory is "getting up off the ground." doubt that has TOO much weight to it, but they certainly seem to be very ineffective for hunting. there was some suggestion for a while that t. rex was a sprinter at best, as he's not really built for speed in any way. i think the argument had mostly to do with leg proportions -- he doesn't have a leg structure conducive to a good run. so the idea that he feathers would have been much use at all for lift is kind of suspect if he's not that good of a runner.but if you have any good information on this, i'd be interested in what you (or dr bakker!) has to show. (hey, one can keep dreaming, right?) i'm not totally sure. בְּתָמִים ? Esesqe oun umeiz teleioi wz o pathr umwn o ouranioz teleioz estin

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no, we find a half-dozen or more species at various intermediate points, and then complain when creationists refuse to connect the dots.

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there is such a thing as reasonable doubt. but in this case, the doubt is nowhere near reasonable.

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