Dismembering Evolution 7: Feathered Dinosaurs

Am I the only one who has noticed that every relatively small carnivorous dinosaur that is discovered these days is automatically assumed to have had feathers?

Take Bambiraptor for example. With no evidence to run with save for some similarities an bone structure between Bambiraptor and Archaeopteryx many artist’s renditions of it, most notably the sculpture made of it for the conference where the dinosaur was officially presented to the public, showed it bearing either feathers or hair-like projections assumed to be the precursor to feathers.

More recently a couple of small dinosaurs were discovered in China, once again assumed to have feathers for some reason. It should be noted that there have also been frauds regarding feather imprints found with dinosaur skeletons, all of which were immediately accepted and highly publicized until the fraud was exposed by a skeptic.

However, there is one very important creature to note that appears to represent a transition from dinosaurs to bird. It is Archaeopteryx.

The classic logical timeline that has been presented to students has bird-like dinosaurs preceding Archaeopteryx as a necessity to the development of this remarkable creature. The fact is that these birdlike dinosaurs appeared tens of millions of years after Archaeopteryx went extinct. Classically, it is taught that birds then arose from Archaeopteryx, with the most dinosaur-like ones coming first and advancing to modern birds. The actual timeline runs something more like this. Archaeopteryx – 10-15 million year gap – birds that survived until the end of the dinosaur age – another class of birds the lasted only a very short time – birdlike dinosaurs – a series of four classes of now extinct birds – modern birds appearing while the birdlike dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. This defies the necessary evolutionary development requirements by having Archaeopteryx predate the dinosaurs that should be its ancestors. It also fudges evolutionary theory by having actual birds appear before the supposed precursors to Archaeopteryx. It also does not fill the gap of millions of years between Archaeopteryx and birds. So evolutionary theory appears to be quite flawed as far as the fossil record goes.

It could be stated that there were divergent lines of evolution leading to similar development among birds and dinosaurs arising independently. First I want to challenge anyone to actually prove that this happened. Second, I want to point out the obvious flaw in this interpretation. This leaves no evolutionary precursors to Archaeopteryx, making it a random aberration of nature with no discernable source. It also eliminates all birdlike dinosaurs from the evolutionary mix because we are forced to conclude that since Archaeopteryx is not descended from them, and that birds themselves predate them, hey are nothing more than an evolutionary dead end. It also does not account for the multimillion year gap in the fossil record between Archaeopteryx and the first birds.

Now for some more personal musings on the whole subject of Archaeopteryx.

This beautiful fossil does share many characteristics of birds and dinosaurs. I will happily grant that. But this does not necessarily mean it is the ancestor of birds. For an example of this problem I shall turn to a more modern creature the Platypus.

The Platypus shares some remarkable similarities to both mammals and birds. It has hair and mammaries, but it also lays eggs and has a bill like a duck. By using the logic of the evolutionist this creature must represent a link of mammals descending from birds, or of birds descending from mammals. It has shared features, so it MUST be a transitional species. In fact, I am willing to bet that evolutionists 100,000,000 years from now will find platypus fossils and declare them to be the missing link between birds and mammals and something or the other.

Today, no scientist is using the platypus to try to prove that birds are descended from mammals, or that mammals are descended from birds, but it should only make sense to make this argument if you are a Darwinist. I mean, shared features prove common descent right? Mixed features prove ancestry, right? Also, isn’t hair supposed to have preceded feathers anyway? Aren’t feathers just modified hairs? That means evolutionary theory should stop looking for dinosaurs as the transition to birds and start looking to the tiny primitive mammals that lived during the age of the dinosaurs. After all, nobody is claiming that mammals evolved from dinosaurs; there is just no fossil evidence to support this.

So to the Darwinist I say, is the Platypus a transitional species between birds and mammals or not? Do the shared features prove that birds and mammals are interrelated to the point of having split from each other at some point? And if so, doesn’t this eliminate archaeopteryx as a missing link/transitional species? And most importantly, why aren’t the Darwinists asking these questions themselves? Why do people like me have to point them out?

The simple lack of reason, the inability to see and address problems with evolution is, to me, a sign of a weak secular mind. To accept a theory without question is to take it on faith. To fail to look critically at an assertion to evaluate how true it is is gullibility. I remember being taught the classic timeline of Birdlike dinosaurs to archaeopteryx to birds in school and books all the way up to a couple years when I bought my most recent book on dinosaurs. The fact that the timeline is off according to the fossil record causes serious harm to the credibility of all who teach this false timeline. The failure to address this problem openly to a critical public shows fear, fear of reducing people’s faith in evolution.