Is the Latest “Feathered Dinosaur” Actually a Secondarily Flightless Bird?

MSNBC recently had an article titled “Fine-feathered dino sported bizarre bird tail,” reporting on the find of Epidexipteryx hui, a “pigeon-sized dinosaur that lived more than 100 million years ago [that] sported four ribbon-like tail feathers.” (See right for an artist’s imaginative interpretation of the fossil.) One of the original paper’s authors states, “Although this dinosaur cannot be the direct ancestor for birds, it is one of the dinosaurs that have the closest phylogenetic relationship to birds.” The article also contains other quotes with typical Darwinist rhetoric like, “[t]his find confirms the link between dinosaurs and birds.” But are other interpretations possible? Unreported in the media is the fact that the paper contains language directly hinting that Epidexipteryx hui could Read More ›