quote:
the biggest problem for evolutionists and Archaeopteryx is that it does not predate birds, because fossils of other birds have been found in rocks of the same period
if it was one of these so called 'transitional fossils' then it should have existed long before birds became a species, yes?
This is the common Creationist misunderstanding that "transitional" means the same as "ancestral". It does not, and the difference between these two is obvious and fundamental. There is a wide variety of feathered bird-like archosaurs, and even though only one branch of these eventually became ancestral to modern birds, every last one of them is transitional because it shows a clear mix of unique traits from both the bird and dinosaur clades.
Secondly, as others have pointed out, even if archeopteryx were ancestral as well as transitional, the fact that latter archeopteryx finds date to the same time as other birds isn't a violation of ToE at all. As has been said.. "We know that Americans can't be descended from Europeans because Europeans are still alive today!"
But most importantly, you are simply wrong: there are NO modern birds that date to the time of the earliest archeopteryx find. Every claim to the contrary that I've heard has fallen apart upon asking for sources and investigating the actual finds. Instead, the fossil record shows precisely what the ToE predicts: all birds dating to that era show a mix of archosaur and bird traits.
Edited by Fiver, : No reason given.
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