Year 2 Class 8 Session A Notes The Origin of Birds and Whales: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.” (Gen 1:20-­‐23) Origin of Birds Getting something to fly is not easy – aerospace engineers can attest to that! Bird anatomy has so many specialized features that allow for flight (lungs, musculature, feathers, bones) that they give the appearance of having been designed: “Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant. So powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-­‐19th century to realise that it is an illusion.” Richard Dawkins, New Scientist September 17, 2005, p.33 The Evolution Story Examined: Originally scientists thought that dinosaurs became smaller over time as they gradually evolved into today’s birds: “An 80-­‐million-­‐year-­‐old fossil recently uncovered in the Gobi desert could be a key piece of the evolutionary puzzle of how massive dinosaurs gave rise to today's comparatively tiny birds, paleontologists say. The newfound species, dubbed Mahakala omnogovae, measures just 27.5 inches (70 centimeters) from its head to the tip of its feathered tail…Dinosaur digs over the last decade—including many in China—have suggested that several of the ancient reptiles were covered in feathers, a hint of their potential link to bird. But few of the fossils have provided direct evidence of the evolutionary changes that led to flight. Mahakala's small size bolsters the idea that some theropods, or bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs, decreased in stature during the evolutionary transition into birds, according to the team of paleontologists who discovered the young adult fossil. "Miniaturization has long been considered crucial to the origin of flight," said Alan Turner of New York's American Museum of Natural History. "Now Mahakala is providing the first signs of some of these early evolutionary steps." Kevin Holden Platt, New "Mini" Dinosaur a Step in Bird Evolution Path for National Geographic News, September 6, 2007, (Nationalgeographic.com/news) This idea was challenged by the discovery of “Gigantoraptor”: “Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which lived some 70 million years ago, is the largest toothless dinosaur known to date and possibly the biggest feathered animal ever to have lived, according to a team led by Xu Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China…We thought previously that we had a relatively simple pattern—as dinosaurs became smaller in size they became more birdlike," Xu said. "Now, after the discovery of Gigantoraptor, things get more complicated. That doesn't mean birds aren't descended from dinosaurs, but the transition is very complicated," Xu added”. James Owen, National Geographic News, Massive Birdlike Dinosaur Unearthed in China, June 13, 2007 Fossil Dinosaurs with Feathers? Some claim that fossil feathers have been found on some dinosaurs. This is far from proven. First, it is hard to imagine how mutation and natural selection could cross the huge genetic gulf between coding for reptilian scales (folds in the skin) and feathers, which are complex structures that originate in follicles. “At the morphological level feathers are traditionally considered homologous with reptilian scales. However, in development, morphogenesis [shape / form generation], gene structure, protein shape and sequence, and filament formation and structure, feathers are different.” A.H. Brush, “On the Origin of Features”, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 9:131-­‐142, 1996, cited in Jonathan Sarfati, “Refuting Evolution”, Master Books, 1999, pp. 66-­‐67 Secondly, even if some dinosaurs did have feathers or feather-­‐like structures, this would still not be proof that they evolved into birds. Some dinosaurs may have been mosaic creatures (like the platypus) which have a variety of traits. The newly discovered Yeti Crab is a good example of an animal with and unexpected trait, in this case, a strange coat made of fine filaments. The origin of birds is still far from being understood (from and evolutionary perspective): “The issue of bird origins continues to occupy center stage among scientists because these animals differ in so many ways from their flightless antecedents, making avian evolution a critical problem to solve.” Richard Monastersky, “A Fowl Flight,” Science News, Vol. 152, 23 August 1997, p. 120. From Science Daily (June 9, 2009): [Emphasis mine J.F.] Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs. The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-­‐held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-­‐eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say. "It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed.” “It's been known for decades that the femur, or thigh bone in birds is largely fixed and makes birds into "knee runners," unlike virtually all other land animals, the OSU experts say. What was just discovered, however, is that it's this fixed position of bird bones and musculature that keeps their air-­‐sac lung from collapsing when the bird inhales. This is fundamental to bird physiology," said Devon Quick, an OSU instructor of zoology who completed this work as part of her doctoral studies. "It's really strange that no one realized this before. The position of the thigh bone and muscles in birds is critical to their lung function, which in turn is what gives them enough lung capacity for flight." “The implication, the researchers said, is that birds almost certainly did not descend from theropod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus or allosaurus. The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-­‐held beliefs about animal evolution.” Fossil missing links between dinosaurs and birds are arranged on paper in an orderly sequence, yet the dates assigned to the various fossils seem not to support the evolution story. The chart below comes from National Geographic Magazine, July, 1998. At right is the same chart with the accepted dates for these creatures: Today enough fossil birds have been found along with dinosaur fossils to raise serious questions about the supposed evolution from dinosaur to bird: See Scientific American, July, 2010: “It is funny to think of a robin perched on the back of a Velociraptor or a duck paddling alongside a Spinosaurus.” p.73 “The traditional view of bird evolution holds that whereas archaic avian groups arose long before the mass extinction that doomed the dinosaurs and other beasts 65 million years ago, anatomically modern birds originated after that catastrophic event...But fossil discoveries of modern birds predating that mass extinction...show that this group evolved earlier than previously thought and, unlike their archaic counterparts, somehow averted elimination.” Fossil bird footprints have also been discovered that predate any of the fossil skeletal remains of birds: “Here we describe well-­‐preserved and abundant footprints with clearly avian characters from a Late Triassic redbed sequence of Argentina, at least 55 Myr before the first known skeletal record of birds.” Ricardo N. Melchor et al., “Bird-­‐Like Fossil Footprints from the Late Triassic,” Nature, Vol. 417, 27 June 2002, p. 936. “Why were modern birds able to survive the asteroid impact and attendant ecological changes when their more primitive avian cousins and their fellow flyers, the pterosaurs were not?” Scientific American, July, 2010, p. 74 For the Christian, the above question is illegitimate; there was no asteroid that caused mass extinction 65 million years ago. Natural Selection proposed as the driving force of evolution: “Despite the unknowns, we can make some guesses about how natural selection fashioned modern birds” Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True,2009 p. 46 Problems with Coyne’s reasoning: •
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Reification: his is attributing agency to an abstract idea Natural selection (as the name implies) is a selection process – it does not (cannot) create anything: “Natural selection can act only on those biological properties that already exist; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational needs.” Elmer Noble, Ph.D. Zoology, Glenn Nobel, Ph.D. Biology, Gerhard Schad, Ph.D. Biology, Austin MacInnes, Ph.D. Biology, – Parasitology 6th ed., 1989, p. 516 We have only looked at one kind of flying animal (birds). There are many others, all of which appear designed to fly in their own specific ways (bees, dragon flies, bats). It must take a tremendous amount faith to believe that blind, non-­‐rational, natural process alone could produce the elegant design we see in these creatures.