Posted by Jurassosaurus [63.191.8.126 - sdn-ap-014caburbP0126.dialsprint.net] on 12 March 2003 at 02.16.54 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Re: [atheistvschristian] Darwinism’s Fine Feathered Friends—A Matter of Interpretation posted by Gremlin on 10 March 2003 at 19.53.19 ZuluTime:

"Missing Link Connects Dinosaurs, Birds,"1 trumpeted newspaper headlines around the world this summer. The excitement stirred by a June 23 press conference at the National Geographic Society in our nation's capitol proved contagious. No wonder. The rhetoric was anything but objective and cautious as an international team of paleontologists announced the discovery of two fossilized specimens of feathered dinosaurs in China's Liaoning province.2, 3 Philip Currie, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta, declared, "Dinosaurs did not become extinct. In fact, they are alive and well and represented by over 10,000 species of birds."3 Mark Norell, from the American Museum of Natural History, expressed similar exuberance: "Evidence indicating that birds are derived from dinosaurs is absolutely overwhelming."4 U. C. Berkeley paleontologist Kevin Padian said the discovery "should lay to rest any remaining doubts that birds evolved from small coelurosaurian dinosaurs."5

The thing that bugs me most about these statements, besides Norell and Currie's overexaggeration of the dino bird link, is that these critters were discovered way back in 1997! Bloody creationist time warps.
     

1. The feathers found on the two species, named Caudipteryx and Protoarchaeopteryx, are fully formed and fully functional. Both the body feathers and tail feathers discovered were identical to those found on flightless birds living today. A true "missing link" could be expected to reveal structures part way between scales and feathers.

Typical bullshit. As one who was never fond of the whole "feathered dino" movement, and who has always been skeptical of the Liaoning finds, even I can say with certainty that these "feathers" are not identical to modern bird feathers. The earliest feather types (seen in Sinosauropteryx) show small tubules with little branching. They are protofeathers.

In fact if one is interested in a nice rundown of all the steps leading up to the evolution of feathers, I'd suggest looking at the latest issue of Scientific American:

Which Came First, the Feather or the Bird?

One will have to subscribe to read the whole thing. That, or pop down to the local library. Scientific American isn't exactly the hardest magazine to come by.
     

2. Caudipteryx and Protoarchaeopteryx are reportedly 120-145 million years old.8-9 The oldest known bird is the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx.8-9 This timing puts the Darwinian cart before the horse. An abstract of the first published article indicates that the proto in Protoarcheopteryx may be a mistake:

While it is rather annoying to see all the most birdy dinos coming after birds appear, as Gremlin had previously mentioned; it doesn't really matter. If we were going to get so caught up in this chronological strictness, then reptiles, amphibians and other sprawling creatures should no longer be alive. After all, we already have erect standing animals with 4 chambered hearts. How can these "primitive" beasts still be alive?

It's not like they could be advanced in other areas, or anything. As we all know, evolution is an orogenic process, with each new species completely replacing the next, in a steady, linear stream of advancement and complexity.

And if you believed that, then there's this bridge in Brooklyn that I think you might be interested in.
     

3. To say "dinosaurs did not become extinct" is to contradict an enormous body of well-established evidence. New evidence suggests that dinosaurs were wiped out more than once. Thanks to dinosaur mania, nearly every school-aged child today knows that the final dinosaur era, the Cretaceous era, was terminated some 65 million years ago when an asteroid collided with Earth.11-12

This is a matter of semantics only. Cladists say that all creatures remain part of their clade forever, regardless of change. As such, most cladists believe that it is wise (read: cool) to consider all birds as living dinosaurs. It also means that we are all living therapsids, or in the most extreme case: multicellular Archaeans.

As I said, this is nothing more than the usual Eclectics vs. Cladists bout being exploited by this guy for an entirely different reason. In terms of evolution, it makes no difference.
     

Recent discoveries show that similar extraterrestrial catastrophes marked both the Triassic-Jurassic and Jurassic-Cretaceous boundaries. In March of this year, geologists from Britain, Canada, and the U. S. published their discovery of a crater chain caused by the impact of a fragmented comet or asteroid. The collision date, roughly 214 million years ago, coincides with the close of the Triassic period. The diameters of the five impact craters, 100, 40, 25, 15, and 9 kilometers respectively, (not to mention possible ocean impacts) indicate that altogether they could account for the extinction of most, if not all, Triassic dinosaurs.13

I've heard of a Triassic/Jurassic hit, but not a Jurassic/Cretaceous one. Actually I take that back. A recent NY Times article talks about some scientists who seem to be trying to have asteroids contribute to every major extinction on the planet. It looks more like wishful thinking than anything else.

Incidentally, more critters than just Dinosaurs, died out 208 mya.
     

These dramatic catastrophes imply that the so-called "ancestors" of modern birds are not. They could not have survived the devastation. Each of the comet or asteroid collisions that closed off the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods were of such magnitude that no land animal larger than a rodent would have survived. The geological and geophysical data rule out Archaeopteryx or other Jurassic era dinosaurs as ancestors of Protoarchaeopteryx or Caudipteryx, nor could Protoarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx be the ancestors of Tertiary-era birds.

Well, that explains the interest in advocating the multiple bollide hypothesis. Y'know, what works for one extinction, doesn't necessarily work for every extinction. Yeah, it seems that no animal larger than 1 meter survived the K/T event, but that was a rather unique event. It's not everyday that a 10 km asteroid collides with our planet. Besides, animals coming into the Jurassic were much larger than your rodents (which, incidentally, wouldn't have existed yet).

I'm not even going to touch the Punctuated Equilibria comments. That was one of the worst "explanations" for what this theory states, that I've ever heard.
     

4. My final point is that animals as large as theropods and birds are poor candidates for naturalistic change. Many factors severely limit their survivability and greatly enhance the probability of extinction. The six most significant are these: a. population size (any species with a population smaller than a quadrillion individuals suffers more harm than good from mutations)

Where do you get these ridiculous numbers from? I'd like to hear your basis behind this statement (hmm, no citation here).
     

b. time span between birth and the capacity to give birth (more than three months is too long)

Too long for what? For evolution? The planet is 4.5 billion years old. Even if reproductive maturity took 50 years to reach, it's still spit in the wind in terms of geological time.
     

c. number of progeny produced per reproducing adult (less than several thousand is too few)

Another baseless assertion. You know, we have observed instances of evolution in animals that have way less than 1000 offspring per reproducing adult.
     

d. complexity of morphology and biochemistry (more complex than those of the simplest insects is too complex)

The dung that is thrown by apes in the zoo, makes more sense to me than the crap your spewing right now. Do you have any evidence to back this stuff up?
     

e. body sizes (greater than insect size works against survival)

Where? If you don't assign stuff to your statements (i.e. if your not more specific), then they become very hard to follow. Sure small size has its advantages. Most of the available niches on the planet work best for small animals. Duh, no surprise then that most of the life on earth is small. Of course that doesn't mean that there is no room for the big guys. If you want to travel a great distance, then it is advantageous to be a large size. If you are being hunted, then it is advantageous to be of large size. Many environmental niches can only be exploited at large sizes. Yeah, it is more advantageous to be a small animal during catastrophic, world altering events, but these aren't very common on Earth.
     

f. food supplies (the more specialized the less likely to endure dramatic environmental catastrophes) In creatures such as birds and theropods, even small environmental changes can be catastrophic. We can document that the number of bird species has been cut in half, dropping from about 20,000 to just 10,000, over the last 30,000 to 40,000 years.20

Okay, the first part is true. Specialists trade off niche superiority (by specializing, one can be the "best of the best"), for phylogenetic instability. There have been many time in the past, where animals that were specialists, died out during times of great change. Even today we see this happening with cheetahs. So you're right there, but then you completely screw it up by trying to pigeonhole theropods and birds into the specialist category. In broad terms, neither group are specialists. They contain individual species that specialize, but the group as a whole, are generalists. They fit in many separate niches. They have/had plenty of survival inertia. Hence the 160-185 million year tenure for theropods, and the continued presence of birds.
     

While evolutionary principles fail to explain feathered dinosaurs, Genesis succeeds.

Comic relief starts here
     

God introduced large air-breathing animals on the fifth creation day.

     And this relates to, exactly, how many years in geological, or real, time?
     

Though dinosaurs are not explicitly mentioned, they would of course fall into this category.

Of course one has to wonder why YHVH would not want to mention them. Creating an animal that can look into a 4 story building without any effort is no small feat. Oh, I know, it was written in there, but the editor took it out.
     

The multiple extinctions of dinosaurs implies that God replaced extinct dinosaur species with new ones.

Defying the original credo of god not ever letting one of his creations die. Oh, and once again, there were a hell of a lot more animals around back then, than just dinosaurs.
     

In most cases the new species were different from previous ones. God was apparently changing Earth's geology, bio-deposits, flora and fauna, step by step, in preparation for His final creation on Earth—the human race.

Don't forget the new lizard, plant and bacteria species that came about after humans. Oh wait, you probably wanted to forget about that huh?

Once again, note the lack of citation.
     

The so-called "transitional" forms of dinosaurs and birds suggest that God performed more than just a few creative acts here and there, letting natural evolution fill in the rest. Rather, God was involved and active in creating all kinds and stages of dinosaur and bird life, not to mention all other life—the first, the last, and all the forms along the way to the advent of modern humans.21