This argument doesn't work in their favor

If you have been reading my blog lately, you know the drill.  Ray shared the following cartoon on facebook.

Richard Gunther

OK, let's start with the truth.  In the 90's a Cretaceous lake bed was discovered with more bird fossils than any other location yet discovered.  The revolutionary fossil finds led to a black market and in 1999 a Chinese farmer glued two to five different bird and therapod dinosaur fossils together and presented it to paleontologists.  The fraud, archaeoraptor, worked for a time, because all of the species in the fraud were not then known to science.  By the following year, 2000, other paleontologists exposed the fossil as a fake.[1]

However, I don't really think this story works in Ray's favor.  One, let's start with the back end of the reptile, Microraptor zhaoianus.  Microraptors not only were feathered dinosaurs, but they had flight feathers on all four limbs.[2] The cartoon is a little misleading with a feathered bird on the front and a naked reptile on the back.

Now the bird parts came from, Yanornis martini. For the purpose of our discussion here, it is necessary to note that martini had teeth and two claws on both its wings.[3]  Neither of these features show up in Richard's cartoon.  It is important to reiterate that both these bipedal animals had feathers, teeth, and claws unlike any non-extinct reptile or bird today.   It is also important to note, that what are the odds that feathered reptiles and birds existed if there is no evolutionary connection?

It is not like archaeoraptor was a 
crocodile's head on a duck's body.

Next, who discovered the fraud?  Was it Ray or any creationist?  Remember neither of these species had been discovered in 1999.  Yet even with unknown fossil parts, it only took about a year for other paleontologists to expose the fraud.  Also, who created the fraud?  Was it a paleontologist?  No, it was a farmer who decided to fraud the scientific community.  Like with soft tissue in fossils, it is evolutionists that are making the discoveries.  It is evolutionists who are exposing the frauds where they are found.  This self correcting nature is something that Ray chides.  Honestly, I think that it adds credibility.

In the comment section of his cartoon, Richard answered a similar criticism to the one that I made.  Steve wrote:

If it's "one of many," why do you keep harping on the same few? The back end of the dinosaur (the famous Microraptor) had feathers -- these are clearly visible in this fossil and in others of Microraptor. Microraptor, in fact, looks quite a bit like Archaeopteryx, although the "wing" feathers on its legs are more visible in the surviving fossils. The front end was the fairly modern bird Yanornis; note that both Yanornis and Microraptor had larger wings than your drawing indicates.

Richard answered:

Sounds like a fairly good description of this fraud. Seems rather unfortunate that a supposedly solid scientific theory should rest on so many frauds, deceptions, misleading comments, evidence-free claims and hyperbole? Creation, on the other hand, has solid eye-witness accounts, reliable testimonies, real-time evidence and consistent scientific backing.

Almost a decade and half ago, archaeoraptor was debunked by scientists and Richard seems to think that the theory rests on this fraud.  The theory of evolution does not rest on animals that do not exist.