A little birdie told me that some atheists claim that science has found a transitional form from reptile to bird and that this, somehow, has something to do with God’s non-existence.
Don’t ask me where this bird brain gets these ideas but this is what my little birdie friend, whose name is Archaeopteryx, tells me. Archaeopteryx has virtually come to be worshipped as an idol by the sect of atheism that considers “science” as somehow evidencing absolute materialism or rather, disproving God existence.
Here, I merely wished to provide the following information from the peer-reviewed science journal Science, in three segments all of which feature the research of Alan Feduccia.
This first segment is from: Alan Feduccia (Department of Zoology, University of North Carolina and Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Smithsonian Institute) and Harrison B. Tordoff (Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota) “Feathers of Archaeopteryx: Asymmetric Vanes Indicate Aerodynamic Function,” Science, Vol. 203, 9 March 1979, pp. 1021-1022
Vanes in the primary flight feathers of Archaeopteryx conform to the asymmetric pattern in modern flying birds_
evidence from flight in Archaeopteryx has been available for more than 100 years…
Ostriches (Struthio) and rheas (Rhea and Pterocnemia) are flightless and are thought to have evolved from flying birds_
the basic pattern and proportions of the modern avian wing were present in Archaeopteryx and have remained essentially unchanged for approximately 150 million years…
The next segment is again from Alan Feduccia in his paper: “Evidence from Claw Geometry Indicating Arboreal Habits of Archaeopteryx,” Science, Vol. 259, 5 Feb 1993, pp. 790-792
The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx has been thought to have been a feathered predator adapted to running that represents a terrestrial stage in the evolution of true birds from coelurosaurian dinosaurs. Examination of claw geometry, however, shows that (i) modern ground- and tree-dwelling birds can be distinguished on the basis of claw curvature, in that greater claw arcs characterize tree-dwellers and trunk-dwellers, and (ii) the claws of the pes (hind foot) and manus (front hand) of Archaeopteryx exhibit degrees of curvature typical of perching and trunk-climbing birds, respectively. On this basis, Archaeopteryx appears to have been a perching bird, not a cursorial predator…
Two major theories for the evolution of avian flight-the cursorial theory, in which flight evolved from the ground up, and the arboreal theory, in which flight evolved from the trees down-are based on interpretations of the paleobiology and behavior of this primal bird…
To determine if the geometry of the claws of the pes is a useful index for arboreal versus terrestrial habits in birds, I examined more than 500 species of birds, photographed approximately 400 claws (digit III), and traced and measured the claw arcs…
The major separation of birds on the basis of claw arc measurements is between ground-dwellers and all others…
[Archaeopteryx ] had the feathers of modern birds, unchanged in structural detail over 150 million years of evolution…exhibited the classic elliptical wing of modern woodland birds…exhibited a hypertrophied furcula (fused clavicles)…which effect the downstroke of the wing…
Its tail was designed to provide lift in flight and was not loosely constructed; not did it show signs of fraying, which is characteristic of terrestrial birds…
Archaeopteryx was arboreal arvolant, considerably advanced aerodynamically, and probably capable of flapping powered flight to at least some degree. Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird…
This last segment is from Virginia Morell, “Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms,” Science, Vol. 259, 5 Feb 1993, PP. 764-765
Since the first Archaeopteryx specimen was discovered in Germany in 1861, scientists have been pecking at each other like bantam roosters in an attempt to sort out the creature’s true place in evolution. The latest phase of the controversy pits ornithologists, who consider the 150 million-year-old creature a bird, adapted to life in the trees and capable of powered flight, against paleontologists, who claim Archaeopteryx was a dinosaur that spent most of its life on the ground…
Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that the claws of Archaeopteryx indicate that it did live in the trees and was unquestionably a bird. ‘Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur,’ Feduccia says. ‘But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that’”…
[Following upon Henry Huxley’s position (in the late 1860s) that birds are descended from dinosaurs, in 1973 Yale University paleontologist John Ostrom wrote to Nature and] “asserted that the skeleton of Archaeopteryx was ‘that of a coelurosaurian dinosaur…Since Archaeopteryx apparently lacked breastbones for anchoring flight muscles, he questioned whether it could fly at all and suggested that its claws resembled not those of high fliers but the feet of lowly ground dwellers such as quail and roadrunners”…
if Archaeopteryx ran on the ground, then avian flight probably originated when creatures like Archaeopteryx began leaping up (after insects, say) rather than swooping down from the treetops…
now even paleontologists concede Archaeopteryx was capable of flight. ‘Okay, in the vernacular sense, it is a bird,’ grouses Jacques Gauthier, a herpetologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and a supporter of Archaeopteryx’s dinosaur ancestry. ‘If by that you mean something with feathers that sort of flies’…
its claws resemble those of birds that spend most of their time in the trees. To substantiate his claim, Feduccia measured the curvature of the foot claws (Archaeopteryx also had claws on its wings) of the three best Archaeopteryx specimens, then compared this arc with 500 species of modern birds. The fossil’s arc fell comfortably in the range of definitive perching birds…
the fossils’ curved claw on the reversed first toe…is ‘strictly a perching adaptation; it would be a tremendous obstacle to running on the ground’…
‘The claws are extremely similar’ to the foot claws of modern trunk-climbing birds, he [Feduccia] insists. ‘In fact, if you compare the claws of a wood creeper with the manus claws of Archaeopteryx, you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. They are virtually identical’…
Also consider:
Scientific Cenobites, part 3 of 9
Atheist and Darwinian Science and Story Telling, part 8 of 9
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