Cretaceous Duck Ruffles Feathers

[100% ILL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4187287.stm

[racer5.0stang]

This is basically an unidentifiable bundle of bones

Professor Alan Feduccia

Sums up the entire article.

[100% ILL]

[ASsman]

Hmmm, well go figure. Birds/Ducks aren't mammals or anything of the like. Quite queer if you ask me. Meh, always possible that their bone structure is simply analogous (forgot the correct term).. but it's when two seperate species have similar bone structures simply because of the same necessity.

[racer5.0stang]

Hmmm, well go figure. Birds/Ducks aren't mammals or anything of the like. Quite queer if you ask me. Meh, always possible that their bone structure is simply analogous (forgot the correct term).. but it's when two seperate species have similar bone structures simply because of the same necessity.

Kinda like a jaw bone

[bb_bboy]

By posting this it implies that you believe that people must take in new data to revise beleifs and theories that may be incorrect. Scientific thinkers have, generally throughout history, been willing to use new scientific data to both reinforce and more importantly amend theories when new information is discovered. I don't see how the posting of this article negates anything about scientific thought in general. Science is willing to accept its mistakes.

In a similar vein, below is an excerpt of article from the November 2004 National Geographic Magazine. I think this forum would appreciate it. You can find it in its original form here. (http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature1/index.html)

Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally—taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

The rest of us generally agree. We plug our televisions into little wall sockets, measure a year by the length of Earth's orbit, and in many other ways live our lives based on the trusted reality of those theories.

Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. It's such a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultra-orthodox Jews take alarm at the thought that human descent from earlier primates contradicts a strict reading of the Book of Genesis. Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day creation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the theory of evolution "nothing but a deception imposed on us by the dominators of the world system." The late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement, explained that God created "the 8,400,000 species of life from the very beginning," in order to establish multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls. Although souls ascend, the species themselves don't change, he insisted, dismissing "Darwin's nonsensical theory."

Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.

Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin—that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.) Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god.

The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction—that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans—has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.

The Excerpt is From:
Quammen, David. "Was Darwin Wrong?" National Geographic Magazine Nov. 2000: Unknown

[bb_bboy]

If you've read and become interested in the excerpt above, here is a counterargument. I am only posting the link. Is is from the Answering Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/1106ng.asp) website. I thought I might as well post two sides to the issue, since I'm just a nice fucking person like that.

[100% ILL]

By posting this it implies that you believe that people must take in new data to revise beleifs and theories that may be incorrect. Scientific thinkers have, generally throughout history, been willing to use new scientific data to both reinforce and more importantly amend theories when new information is discovered. I don't see how the posting of this article negates anything about scientific thought in general. Science is willing to accept its mistakes.

By posting this I am pointing out that science, even when proven wrong continues with previous assumptions and attempts to incorporate the new data. It is simply a choice of unbelief in a creator. Simply put, Evolution holds that we are a cosmic accident who will continue to evolve indefinately. Creation holds we are intelligently planned for a specific purpose. All of these fossils are in my mind evidence of the Biblical flood.

[Ace42]

How does that "Prove science wrong" ?

[100% ILL]

How does that "Prove science wrong" ?

I was stating that according to the article:

"Many scientists believe modern bird lineages did not evolve until the end of the dinosaurs' reign."

I'm not saying this article in and of itself proves science wrong, but it certainly lends credit to the whole idea that science doesn't have it quite right. This is proof. "Hey we didn't think modern bird lineages evolved until after the dinasours." So that only puts them what a few million years off track? And if the ancestors to modern birds did indeed exsist along side the dinasours how did they continue to survive when the dinasours were killed by some cataclysmic event? In my opinion it simply brings a giant question mark to the surface that is too large to be ignored.

[ASsman]

Yah, they have yet to find anything that conflicts with my "Matrix" theory. I stand corrected.

[Ace42]

I was stating that according to the article:

"Many scientists believe modern bird lineages did not evolve until the end of the dinosaurs' reign."

Fossil remains of a bird that lived 70 million years ago

Although the first bird, Archaeopteryx, lived in the Jurassic period 150 million years ago, researchers disagree over when modern birds made their first appearance.

One camp believes many modern bird lineages existed as long as 100 million years ago.

I'm not saying this article in and of itself proves science wrong, but it certainly lends credit to the whole idea that science doesn't have it quite right. This is proof. "Hey we didn't think modern bird lineages evolved until after the dinasours."

The article says quite the opposite. As it clearly says in simple English, some scientists believed bird lineages existed 30 million years BEFORE these bones. And the even older relative (Archaeopteryx) another 50 million years before that.

So that only puts them what a few million years off track?

Try "30 million years in the comfort zone"

And if the ancestors to modern birds did indeed exsist along side the dinasours how did they continue to survive when the dinasours were killed by some cataclysmic event? In my opinion it simply brings a giant question mark to the surface that is too large to be ignored.

It "simply" brings a giant question mark to how you can function with such a woefully inadequet mind. Did you not know that birds are warm-blooded, whereas reptiles are not?

[100% ILL]

It "simply" brings a giant question mark to how you can function with such a woefully inadequet mind. Did you not know that birds are warm-blooded, whereas reptiles are not?


I somehow manage, thanks for the remarks

[100% ILL]

The article says quite the opposite. As it clearly says in simple English, some scientists believed bird lineages existed 30 million years BEFORE these bones. And the even older relative (Archaeopteryx) another 50 million years before that.

Try "30 million years in the comfort zone"

The point is they do not agree that modern bird ancestors lived with the dinasours as these fossils would seem to indicate. That's like saying modern man roamed around with Neanderthol at the same time, then suddenly Neanderthol was wiped out; and here all this time we thought We didn't appear until afterwards.


One camp believes many modern bird lineages existed as long as 100 million years ago. According to this vision, familiar looking birds would have been running and flying about alongside dinosaurs.

In contrast the other camp thinks that, although birds did exist during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, they were largely wiped out by whatever killed the dinosaurs.

According to this theory, only a few lineages made it through the mass extinction and, subsequently, these lonely survivors blossomed into all the modern bird families we know today.

Professor Feduccia is sure that bird species could not have survived a major global extinction en masse.

"Birds are very sensitive to any environmental disturbance - in fact they are a good indicator of environmental problems.

"But these people don't believe whatever caused the mass extinction had any affect on the birds, and that seems ludicrous."

[Ace42]

The point is they do not agree that modern bird ancestors lived with the dinasours as these fossils would seem to indicate.

And you do agree with Catholic doctrine. That must mean Christianity is wrong!

Professor Feduccia is sure that bird species could not have survived a major global extinction en masse.

"Birds are very sensitive to any environmental disturbance - in fact they are a good indicator of environmental problems.

"But these people don't believe whatever caused the mass extinction had any affect on the birds, and that seems ludicrous."

Professor Feduccia is a paleontologist, not an ornithologist. And It is fallacious to assume that prehistoric birds are identical in abilities and habits as the birds that evolved from them.

And, I would hardly suggest that one fossilised ancestor suggests that "bird species survived a global extinction en masse" anyway.