IC & the Cambrian Explosion for Ahmad...cont..

"... where Archaeopteryx is classified with the dinosaurs. You will notice also that archie was originally classified as a dinosaur and some specimens were considered to be compsognathus for a time. In fact, I have read on TO that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (both, I believe, creationists) have argued that archie is actually a hoax composed of dinosaur fossils with feathers attached. Just how do you explain all this confusion?"
--Maybe they were referring to Archaeoraptor? If they were talking about Archaeopteryx, they've probably asked to be ignored.
--A recent article in Discover (February 2003) entitled Plucking Apart the Dino-Birds (Discover Dialogue between Kathy A. Svitil & Ornithologist and Evolutionary Biologist, Alan Feduccia), is very interesting. Fedducia thinks birds are not descended from dinosaurs and this is briefly discussed in the dialogue.------------------[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 01-31-2003]

"For commited cladists birds are dinosaurs. "
--This is what Fedducia doesn't agree with as he illustrates in the Discover article.From the article:Many of today's paleontologists say birds are dinosaurs--specifically, the surviving members of a group called theropods. But is it true? Alan Fedduccia, an ornithologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, doesn't think so. He and a handful of other skeptics argue that birds evolved from an early dinosaur ancestor, making them only slightly closer relatives of T. rex than lizards are. Feduccia shared his views with Discover associated editor Kathy A. Svitil.

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Why don't you think birds are descended form dinosaurs?
First, the time line is all wrong. These alleged dinosaurian ancestors of birds occur 25 million to 80 million years after Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird. Second, by the time you get to dinosaurs, you are dealing with fairly large, earthbound creatures, which means they would have had to evolve flight from ground up, rather than from the trees down. Evolving flight from the ground up is biophysically impossible. Third, many of the features of birds and dinosaurs--the hands and teeth for example--don't match.------------------