Tag: birds
Scientists Dispute Claims of Converting Bird Beaks Into Dinosaur Snouts
Carl Zimmer in the New York Times reports some provocative-sounding news under an attention-grabbing headline.
Massive Genetic Study Confirms Birds Arose in “Big Bang”-Type of “Explosion”
It’s long been known that the Cambrian explosion isn’t the only explosion of organisms in the fossil record.
Feathers Not Flying Over New Dinosaur Fossil
There are three general problems with claims of feathered dinosaur fossils.
The "Ancestor of All Dinosaurs" Might Have Had Feathers Dinofuzz (Updated)
The media that loyally serve Big Science are at it again, overstating the finds of a scientific paper to promote an evolutionary icon.
Inconsistent Reasoning Governs Evolutionary Interpretations of Feathered Dinosaurs
Nature news is reporting another feathered dinosaur. The title of the Nature news article says, “Crested dinosaur pushes back dawn of feather.” This dinosaur is from around 130 mya, but feathers are already known from the bird Archaeopteryx around 150 mya. So how does it push back the origin of feathers? Their reasoning is that the feathers on this new species, dubbed Concavenator corcovatus, appear in a different lineage than the one that supposedly led to birds. Since “such structures [feathers] are unlikely to have evolved separately in both groups” they use evolutionary reasoning to infer that “the common ancestor of the two predatory dinosaur branches, ‘could have been feathered’.” This pushes the origin of feathers back to “Middle Jurassic Read More ›