The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! Part 7
From EvoWiki
Contents |
Alan Feduccia
Alan Feduccia is among a very tad few evolutionists out there who do mean well, but they object the notion of birds being descendants of dinosaurs and would rather stick with the orthodox view of birds being descendants of a certain common ancestral reptile, thinking the idea of dinosaurs evolving into birds as (quote in bold letters shown in the upper part of page 76), “just a fantasy of theirs,” which he's referring to those who advocate the dinosaur-descending-into-birds reality. Unfortunately for both Ham and Feduccia, this so-called 'just a fantasy of theirs' is all too real due to multi-scores of real, valid fossil evidence being discovered in China. However, young earth creationism YECs, like Ham, takes advantage of this and began abuse Feduccia's and his writings; using the argument-from-authority and Red Herring arguments to promote a unmerited case against the fact that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs, Thankfully these paleontologists are all among a very small minority, but the YECs are making them as if they are of the leading authority, while if fact they're not.
Appeal To Authority
From page 75 through page 77, Ham attempts to refute the notion of birds being dinosaurs by making appeals to authority and outdated claims. Ham says that it was John Ostrom, who begin to popularized the idea of dinosaurs evolving into birds. Actually, it was really Thomas Huxley, Darwin's “bulldog,” who has brought on the idea of birds being dinosaurs first. But, it was rejected for decades at least until the 1960's when Ostrom brought up the idea of birds being dinosaurs while he was studying fossil remains of Deinonychus, an early Cretaceous dromaeosaurid that was first discovered in 1964 and found features on him that bears a striking resemblance to modern birds including a Saurischian hip that looks more Ornithschian than Saurischian. Ham takes seriously Alan Feduccia's wrongful conclusions on feathered dinosaurs and puts them down in bold letters on the top of page 76 a quote taken out of text found in an article on the debate involving dino-bird evolution which reads according to Ham's book,
“It's just a fantasy of theirs, They just want to see living dinosaurs that now they think they can study them vicariously at the backyard bird feeder.”
Ham got the quote wrong. Feduccia is actually saying in full context with the correct words in bold,
"It's just a fantasy of theirs," says Alan Feduccia, an ornithologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a leading critic of the paleontologists. "They so much want to see living dinosaurs that now they think they can them vicariously at the backyard bird feeder.”
When the quote is put in full complete context, we find that Feduccia is actually scoffing openly at those who, through the discovery of Sinosauropteryx, is highly convinced that birds are indeed living dinosaurs. Feduccia is mistaken, however.Yet, Ham took advantage of this and made up the Red Herring argument by ripping the quote, found on page 38, out-of-context from the article coming from an outdated Audubon Magazine entitled The Origins of Birds: The Dinosaur Debate and used it to throw people off of the real truth behind the quote which is part of a debate between evolutionists over how the evolution of birds is processed. He feebly uses fabrications, quote minings, and other forms of red herring arguments against the feathered dinosaur fact, while showing disregard for the other side who favors the dinosaur-bird concept to be fact due to strong evidence pointing to that fact. While doing this, Ham tries to deceive the reader into thinking that the feathered dinosaurs mentioned here are all fakes while in fact they are all real and valid.
Mononykus
First off Ham fabricates the discovery of Mononykus, the so-called “birdosaur” in 1993 that is really an Alverezsaurid, dinosaurs with 2 small stumpy arms with a small claw on each of them, claiming that scientists have reached the conclusion saying the dinosaur is really nothing more than a mole. Moles don't have such puny arms and very long legs like Mononykus has. The claim, also being made in an issue of Creation Ex nihilio magazine is nothing more than a direct fabrication of this article.
Sinosauropteryx
Secondly, Ham tries to refute the notion of Sinosauropteryx having hair-like feathers on his back by fabricating a story about how 4 scientists (“the dream team.”) traveled to China to see the fossils of Sinosauropteryx . Despite what Ham claimed out of context, scientists have found that the feathers of the dinosaur were not feathers of modern types. Instead, they are actually feathers of prototypes, feathers that looked very hair-like that are similar to that of the kiwi, a small flightless bird with hair like feathers covering all over its body. Although not part of the group, Alan Feduccia wrongfully concludes the hair like feathers on the dinosaur to be skin fibers a lot like the frill of an iguana. Thankfully, those who study the fossil never bought into the iguana skin claim because they found that the hair like feathers of the dinosaur covered all over its entire body, not just its back. The newspaper, where Ham got this distorted claim as shown on page 76 from, came from a very brief rash article, published in 1997 in The New Scientist, that have jumped to conclusions about what the scientists have found there in China when they observed the fossils of Sinosauropteryx for the first time. Jeff Poling, webmaster of the dinosauria.com website wrote an article that clarifies what the article has said about the fossils and the conclusions made by the scientists who observed the fossils and found hair-like protofeathers on them.
Unenlagia
Thirdly, Ham then claims there was a report made of a discovery in South America of a dinosaur that's more bird-like than any other dinosaur, which of course is Unenlagia, a dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period 90 million years ago in what is now South America. This claim about the dinosaur is true. It is much more bird-like than before and has the capabilities to flap his arms the same way a bird, like an ostrich flaps its wings. However, Ham here is trying to discredit the findings by falsely branding the dinosaur as just “a reptile” that is known from “20 bone fragments,” but it won't work despite Ham efforts to fabricate it. Read more about Unenlagia here.
Red Herring
Now, he gives out a Red Herring argument (an argument that attempt to throw people off the real factual trail.) and a blatant falsehood by claiming that since birds are warm blooded, evolutionists would like to see dinosaurs as warm-blooded to support their theory. They've already have seen it, for instance, when they observed dinosaur bones through a microscope and found that dinosaurs have scores of hollow canals, called haversian, inside of them that are similar to birds and mammals that indicated the dinosaurs must have been much more energetic and grew much more faster then we thought. However, Ham launches a red herring argument and quote mined an article made up by someone by the name Bill Stieg, who wrote a March, 1997 article from The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Did Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs?” (The article is actually entitled "Bones of Contention".) where in it, Larry Martin, another critic of the birds as dinosaurs idea, is claimed to have said, “Recent studies of the bones structure, when viewed under a microscope, of the dinosaurs showing they were the characteristics of cold-blooded animals. So were back to cold-blooded dinosaurs .” This quote when put into full text actually reads,
Martin didn't see anything to change his opinion that this was no warm-blooded bird relative. Recent research has shown the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones was "characteristic of cold-blooded animals," Martin said. "So we're back to cold-blooded dinosaurs."
In real full fledge context, He and others like him were expressing their disbelief that these hair like structures were actually bird feathers in contrast to others who greatly favored the fossil to have imprints of hair like feathers growing on its body. Instead Martin and other like him thought that the structures on the back of Sinosauropteryx were that of skin fibers resembling the skin fibers of an iguana. (Just as mentioned above.) This article is written when the discovery of the fossil is all brand new just before the notice of the so-called 'skin fibers' that are actually hair-like feathers dotting all over the body of the fossil thus refuting the claims made up by critics like Martin here that the hair like fossil is of skin fibers. A prime example of a Red Herring Argument by entirely taking the quote above out of text and twist it all up to just to trick and deceive the gullible into believing this favors creationism, while it's not and throws them off the trail of the real truth behind the quote the same way he did with the Feduccia quote as mentioned before.
To read the full article in full context click here.
Ham's False Accusation
Then Ham slanderously accuses the so-called secular media (In a way, creationists are of the secular. They will have nothing to do with God and his Creation all the way down to the finest detail because of what God reveals through His creation greatly contradicts their dogma and says to them that they are wrong. They are afraid of the truth. They do not want to be told that they are wrong because of their selfish pride and arrogance. They just don't want to have anything to do with anything that contradicts their self-centered dogma, even if God was there to show them all of the valid evidence for evolution, old earth, and against their views and prove to them that Darwin was right all along, front and center.) of being so blatant in its mythic “anti Christian” stand and the mythic evolutionary “propaganda” (Words the funny farm escapee has invented from his deluded head to falsely imply that all of what he teaches is all Christian while all others are not.), that they will go all the way to say truthfully that parrots and humming birds are also dinosaurs too. They both are along with cockatiels, chickens, crows, ravens, and others.
Finger origin
Next, Ham fabricates the claim about embryonic origins of the fingers of dinosaurs and birds where he claims that the fourth and fifth digits of the dinosaur embryo's hand is lost while the first, second, and third digit fingers remain while the first and fifth digits of the bird embryo's fingers gets lost leaving the second, third, and fourth fingers behind. This claim, he thinks, is showing that birds could not (in large capital letters) evolved from dinosaurs. This claim is easily debunked here.
Dinosaur Lung
Ham then fabricates the study of the lung areas of the feathered dinosaurs made by Feduccia and other like him, who claim that the dinosaur must have been breathing in cold air and breathing out warm air with lungs that are very similar to a normal reptile's heart, which is absurd. This is all the result of an observation of a photograph taken of one of the fossil specimens and the fact that the fossils, especially the one shown in the photograph, were all crushed and badly damaged during fossilization to the point where it is difficult for scientists to interpret them correctly under the best circumstances just as explained here.
Here's an article on PZ Myers' Pharyngula blog that addresses about how dinosaur lungs and bird lungs are quite similar to each other.
Protofeathers
Finally, there is a claim made about the protofeathers on the dinosaurs being assumed to be alleged fibered skin similar to a sea snake fin. This is made up by another dinobird-critic named John Ruben of the Oregon State University, who also made conclusions about the fossils based on the photographs along and tried to demonstrate the dino feathers = snake skin claim by dissecting a tail of a sea snake. Thankfully, a great majority of those, who are highly familiar with the feathered dinosaur fossils, is NOT buying into this far-fetched sea snake skin claim. There is a sci.bio.paleontology Google group that has a thread here that contains an article by Ralph W. Miller III about the time he went to see presentations of Ruben, who demonstrated the sea snake fallacy just by teasing the skin fibers a bit to make it look more hairy than scaly. Philip J. Currie was also there disproving the sea snake fallacy as well. When Ruben was dissecting the bodies of a sea snake and a monitor lizards, he teased the skin a bit to look more like the hair like feathers of the dinosaur than what it really is. Here is what he said about his visit.
“I attended presentations by Ruben et al. on the collagen fiber hypothesis for the structures associated in situ with the Sinosauropteryx prima specimens, as well as talks by Philip J. Currie which disproved the hypothesis at both the SVP meeting in Chicago, 1997, and the Scientific Symposium at Dinofest in Philadelphia in April of 1998. Ruben et al. dissected a sea snake and a monitor lizard, stripped the bulk of the rope-like collagen frill supports of the dissected bodies, and teased the few remaining strands up away from the spine. They did not demonstrate that this procedure compares to natural processes of bioactivity or erosion on the internal collagen fiber bundles of dead reptiles, nor did they show that any fossil animal which should have sported a fin-like frill for swimming ever has been shown to preserve features comparable to the Sinosauropteryx filaments. Furthermore, their assertion that Sinosauropteryx was adapted to a swimming lifestyle is not supported by the theropod's body plan. Most animals can swim, but this animal was not modified to optimize swimming, and it would not have benefited from a dorsal fin extending from its brow to the tip of its tail anyway, as much of the body would float above the water, and the body lacks the capability to produce full body sinuous serpentine movement as snakes, crocodilians, and lizards do. Not only that, but Currie pointed out that the fibers are not restricted to the midline of the body, but are ubiquitous, with fibers evident on the arms, legs, ribs, and back. One specimen held the remains of a lizard within, and the other has a mammal jaw inside its gut. There is no evidence that these animals ate fish or other marine creatures. The Bavarian specimen of the closely related Compsognathus longipes, which is anatomically quite similar to Sinosauropteryx, was preserved in the sediments of a lagoon, but the lagoon was an anoxic death trap which would not support marine life. Compsognathus was found with a lizard in its gut, too, by the name of Bavarisaurus. There is no reason to believe that compsognathids had aquatic lifestyles. I urge the curious among you to view the photograph of the teased collagen fibers in the _Science_ article, "Plucking the Feathered Dinosaur," by Ann Gibbons, from _Science_, Volume 278, Number 5341, 14 November 1997, pp. 1229-1230. Compare these fibers to the actual fossil filaments on _Sinosauropteryx_ in the July 1998 National Geographic, at the top of page 83. As Currie and his fellow paleontologists describe them, the preserved filaments appear to be hollow, relatively coarse, curving gently, piling up atop one another, and criss crossing over each other. They may also have a branching aspect to them, something like the down feather of a bird, but this cannot be verified at this time. I do not believe that the two images compare..... Also, bear in mind that Currie studied three specimens in person in some detail, whereas Ruben et al. were working from photographs alone.”
Without doubt, the sea snake skin fallacy Ham and other YECs is promoting is nothing more another form of a red herring they are using to curtail their followers from reality concept of feathered dinosaurs. To know more about feathered dinosaurs especially Sinosauropteryx, click here.
Denial of Evidence
Ham has lied to us by claiming there is, in bold letters, “no” evidence for dinosaurs evolving into birds. Sorry Ham, There IS TO undeniable evidence of dinosaurs evolving into birds you blatantly chose to deny. This web page here clearly refutes all of Ham's dino-bird claims found in his stupid book. Despite what Ham falsely assumes, Dinosaurs, no doubt about it, have always been all of these, including birds.
