Real Science Friday: Many Modern Birds Found in Dinosaur Layers

[Jefferson]

RSF: Many Modern Birds Found in Dinosaur Layers

This is the show from Friday, August 24th, 2012.

SUMMARY:



* Dr. Carl Werner Pressures Museums to Show the Birds: On Real Science Friday, executive producer of the "Evolution: Grand Experiment" series, Dr. Werner, lists the many modern bird species that museums worldwide are refusing to display in their dinosaur exhibits. In this way Carl continues to expose the Darwinist bias in museums and textbooks that lead to scientific illiteracy regarding a primary theme of fossil evidence. For example, with 432 mammal species excavated by paleontologists, that means that the number of mammal species from dinosaur layers is now approaching the total number of dinosaur species. (Note: For each of Dr. Werner's DVDs, he also has written a book of the same title.)

For today's show Real Science Friday recommends
Dr. Carl Werner's DVDs, Living Fossils and
its prequel Evolution, the Grand Experiment!




* Regarding Living and Fossil Plants: Dr. Werner quotes Dr. Peter Crane of the Royal Botanic Gardens in London about plant fossils excavated from dinosaur-layer strata: "I always think about the late Cretaceous, that if you were there... the vegetation would have looked really very much like today: Dogwoods, tulip trees, magnolias, and so on..."



* RSF Programs about Dr. Carl Werner's Work:
- What Museums Aren't Showing You
- Rodhocetus: Whale of a Tail
- RSF: Dr. Carl Werner and the Living Fossils
- RSF: Many Modern Birds Found in Dinosaur Layers (this show)

* Dr. Werner Compliments the RSF Dino Soft Tissue Page: Carl Werner again complimented our DinosaurSoftTissue.com. See also the new RSF-produced site, YoungEarth.com!

Today’s Resource: Get the fabulous Carl Werner DVD Living Fossils and his great prequel, Evolution: The Grand Experiment! And have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins!

 

[Cricket]

If modern birds are found with dinosaurs, doesn't that put to serious doubt the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds?

 

[icilian fenner]

If modern birds are found with dinosaurs, doesn't that put to serious doubt the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds?

In a word (pending a decent definition of 'modern'); no.

There's no reason that a single species/family/etc would not give rise to multiple, divergent evolutionary lines. Each individual divergence may be fit for survival simultaneously; and so all could be found together.

 

[Cricket]

In a word (pending a decent definition of 'modern'); no.

There's no reason that a single species/family/etc would not give rise to multiple, divergent evolutionary lines. Each individual divergence may be fit for survival simultaneously; and so all could be found together.

Modern means something that can be found in the world today.

I don't see how you can continue to believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs if examples of the birds exist with examples of the dinosaurs.

Things that live together cannot evolve from one to the other. The one has to change to the other.

 

[Frayed Knot]

Things that live together cannot evolve from one to the other. The one has to change to the other.

Not true - mammals, birds, and dinosaurs all evolved from reptiles, but there are still reptiles today.

This is really not that hard.

 

[Alate_One]

Modern means something that can be found in the world today.

I don't see how you can continue to believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs if examples of the birds exist with examples of the dinosaurs.

Things that live together cannot evolve from one to the other. The one has to change to the other.

That's like saying you can't be alive at the same time as your grandparents, or more accurately, your cousins.

Lineages reproduce, some will branch and become new forms, others will stay relatively close to what they were before, and still others will evolve in totally different directions.

Birds diverged from dinosaurs long before they became extinct. Do you think it would make sense for them to somehow diverge from a lineage AFTER it became extinct? :dizzy:

 

[Cricket]

Not true - mammals, birds, and dinosaurs all evolved from reptiles, but there are still reptiles today.

This is really not that hard.

It wouldn't be hard to understand if modern birds were not found with the dinosaurs they were said to evolve from.

Evolution requires a lot of time. Placing one stage with a previous stage means the evolution had to start well beforehand.

I guess the explanation should properly be that dinosaurs and birds share a common ancestor.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Recorded history shows that men bred dogs from wolves, and yet both dogs and wolves live simultaneously. Part of the confusion comes with how Evolution is often represented. It is not a linear process as it is illustrated with the now iconic primate-to-upright-man picture. Rather we should think of evolution as a tree with many divergent branches.

One species diverging from another, does not necessarily make the parent species extinct, they can coexist if they occupy different ecological niches or different geographic areas.

 

[Lighthouse]

Recorded history shows that men bred dogs from wolves,

Funny how that didn't take millions of years, isn't it?

"Ancient" dog breeds? Not so ancient, it turns out.

 

[Cricket]

Recorded history shows that men bred dogs from wolves, and yet both dogs and wolves live simultaneously. Part of the confusion comes with how Evolution is often represented. It is not a linear process as it is illustrated with the now iconic primate-to-upright-man picture. Rather we should think of evolution as a tree with many divergent branches.

One species diverging from another, does not necessarily make the parent species extinct, they can coexist if they occupy different ecological niches or different geographic areas.

Evolution requires a lot of time. If birds descended from dinosaurs then the process started long before the time where the bird and dinosaur were found together.

 

[Frayed Knot]

If birds descended from dinosaurs then the process started long before the time where the bird and dinosaur were found together.

It's not right to talk about "the dinosaur." Dinosaurs were a large class of animals, like reptiles are a large class. Dinosaurs descended from some of the reptiles, but afterwards there were still animals called reptiles.

The dinosaurs eventually died out, but there was lots and lots of time for them to co-exist with birds. Dinosaurs existed for more than 160 million years!

 

[Cricket]

It's not right to talk about "the dinosaur."

The dinosaur was found with the bird. That bird could have evolved from that dinosaur had they not been found together. Finding them together removes this possibility.

The same thinking should apply in a general case. Finding diverse fossils together should generally reduce the likelihood that one evolved from the other.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Funny how that didn't take millions of years, isn't it?

"Ancient" dog breeds? Not so ancient, it turns out.

Not really, no.

1) Variation in dogs pales in comparison to the variation we see in life over the past million years or so.

2) It would be expected that a human driven process occurs more quickly than an equivalent natural process.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

Evolution requires a lot of time. If birds descended from dinosaurs then the process started long before the time where the bird and dinosaur were found together.

Firstly I would like to clarify that when we are talking about "modern birds" what we are talking about is the subclass of birds 'Neornithes' which:

"...are characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth (ancient birds had teeth), the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton."

Prior to this discovery, this subclass of birds was thought to have arisen a few million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out. However now we are forced to conclude that are older than previously thought. Which them being a few million years older isn't that big of a deal when you realize that they were already thought to be about 55 to 60 Million years old to begin with. So it changes our understanding of how evolution occurred, but it doesn't present any challenge as to whether it happened or not

The real importance of this discovery is that the prevailing explanation was that the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs is what caused Modern Birds (Neorithes) to evolve the way they did. Now we are force to rethink that explanation that we have found modern birds before the mass extinction event.

Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neornithes

I hope this has cleared up any confusion for anybody who misunderstood.

 

[Daedalean's_Sun]

I really hope cricket and others read my last post as I think it is essential to understanding this topic. The article cited in the OP is quite misleading.

 

[Cricket]

... it doesn't present any challenge as to whether it happened or not

Of course it does. You cannot simply push back dates and change ideas and expect the theory to remain as strong as it was.

 

[Frayed Knot]

Of course it does. You cannot simply push back dates and change ideas and expect the theory to remain as strong as it was.

You're living in some kind of backwards bizarro-world. At one time, scientists had thought birds first came around after the dinosaur extinction, because we didn't have evidence that they were older than that. Now that we have more evidence, we know that the first birds evolved when other dinosaurs were still around.

Every step of our understanding is an approximation based on the data we have at the time. As the data increases, our understanding becomes less and less approximate.

You will take heart to know that there will always be details that we haven't yet figured out. But saying that updating the theory makes it weaker is just backwards. As we get more data to support refining it, that makes it stronger.

 

[Cricket]

You're living in some kind of backwards bizarro-world. At one time, scientists had thought birds first came around after the dinosaur extinction, because we didn't have evidence that they were older than that. Now that we have more evidence, we know that the first birds evolved when other dinosaurs were still around.

Every step of our understanding is an approximation based on the data we have at the time. As the data increases, our understanding becomes less and less approximate.

You will take heart to know that there will always be details that we haven't yet figured out. But saying that updating the theory makes it weaker is just backwards. As we get more data to support refining it, that makes it stronger.

Daedalean's_Sun just described a whole concept of how birds evolved as being overturned! That's not a slight adjustment to a reasonable approximation.

 

[Frayed Knot]

Daedalean's_Sun just described a whole concept of how birds evolved as being overturned!

"Overturned"? How do you get that out of what he said? We had thought they came about 60 million years ago, now we think that date is somewhat older. We had thought they descended from dinosaurs, now we are more certain of that - we know the particular type of dinosaurs they descended from.

I don't see any overturning.

 

[Cricket]

the prevailing explanation was that the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs is what caused Modern Birds (Neorithes) to evolve the way they did. Now we are force to rethink that explanation that we have found modern birds before the mass extinction event.

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