ICR uses a fifteen year old article against Jurassic World

ICR put out, What Would Need to Change for a Dinosaur to Evolve into a Bird?, in response to Jurassic World.  It was lacking.

"Feathers: Feathers are not at all similar to scales. Even if scales were frayed, they would not be interlocking and impervious to air as are feathers. Actually, feathers are more similar to hair follicles than scales. Could such precise design arise by mutation? In all the recent discoveries of dinosaur fossils with "feathers," the "feathers" are merely inferred. What is actually present is better described as thin filaments which originate under the skin."

Who is still advancing the idea of frayed scales evolving into feathers?

"Birds have delicate, hollow bones to lighten their weight while dinosaurs had solid bones."

Not all dinosaurs had solid bones.

"Lungs: Birds are unique among land-dwelling vertebrates in that they don't breathe in and out. The air flows continually in a one-directional loop supporting the bird's high metabolism. Reptilian respiration is entirely different, more like that in mammals."

Unidirectional breathing has been discovered in crocodiles.

"A recent "mummified" dinosaur, with soft tissue fossilized, proved to be quite like a crocodile, and not at all like a bird."

Which one? Without citing which dinosaur mummy this argument is meaningless, especially when crocodiles are proving more bird-like.

Citation at the bottom of the article

I noticed this article was written in 2000. We know in 2015 that some dinosaurs had hollow bones and another archosaur, ie crocodile, has unidirectional breathing. Especially since the discovery of unidirectional breathing in crocodiles, I have been extremely frustrated in the reluctance of creationists to update their media. Why knowingly share fifteen year old outdated incorrect info?

More creationist compliant than you might think

Tyrannosaurus rex VS Struthiomimus by haghani on deviantART

Oddly enough this picture is more creationist compliant than many creationists might already know.  Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell has speculated that ornithomimids might actually have been birds and have had feathers.

Walking with Feathers II

Yesterday, I wrote Walking with Feathers about how AiG seems inconsistent since they accept some Troodons, Dromaeosaurs, and Oviraptorosaurs had feathers, but find "no evidence" that other Troodons, Dromaeosaurs, and Oviraptorosaurs had feathers.  The definition of a "kind" is only going to grow broader and therefore the number of dinosaur "kinds" is only going to shrink.  It is hard to imagine how they count fifty.  Not only is increasing diversity going to decrease the number, but increasingly dinosaurs are being called birds by Answers in Genesis and the number is only going to grow.

Given the lack of visible feathers, the data about these ornithomimids remains inconclusive. Without definitive feathers, they may just be dinosaurs. Or they may be extinct birds, descendants of the birds God made in the beginning. God made all kinds of birds on the 5th day of Creation week and land animals such as dinosaurs on the 6th. And nothing about this study demonstrates the evolution of feathers or the evolution of birds.

To be fair, as much as some creationists seem to argue for a firm line between birds, created on Day 5, and dinosaurs, created on Day 6, there is no reason why such a distinction should exist.  God could easily create a crocoduck.

Instead of invoking a back-and-forth evolutionary process of land animals to birds and (in the case of oviraptorosaurs) back to land animals, how much more sensible it is to discard evolution altogether and to accept special creation instead! Owing to the fact that the Creator was under no obligation to use a nested hierarchy of created living things, at least in every case, it is not difficult to understand why evolutionists have such problems in their attempts to force ‘nonavian’ and ‘avian’ traits into any sort of evolutionary lineage.

Also:

If you could plot all the distinct created “kinds” of organisms on a graph, based on their features, you would see that God filled the graph with a tapestry of distinct kinds. Between these different kinds God scattered mosaics.1 For instance, between deer and antelope kinds He put pronghorns; between raccoon and bear kinds* He put pandas; and so it goes...All examples of evolutionary links that have ever been claimed, such as australopithecines**(between tree-dwelling apes and earth-dwelling humans), archaeocetes (between quadrupeds and modern whales), mammal-like reptiles (between reptiles and mammals), Archaeopteryx(between reptiles and birds), and Tiktaalik and Acanthostega (between fish and amphibians) are, in fact, mosaics, not links.

*Pandas are placed in the bear kind in the recent paper on Mammalian Ark Kinds.
**Australopithecus sediba was called an earth-dwelling human by a 2010 creationist paper.

Walking with Feathers

Ken Ham posted a blog about the movie, Walking with Dinosaurs in which he quoted from an upcoming review of the movie soon to be posted on Answers in Genesis.  

The film is set in what evolutionists call the Late Cretaceous period—and the influence of evolutionary ideas is evident in the way the dinosaurs are portrayed. The Troodon, Hesperonychus, and Chirostenotes are all feathered dinosaurs that appear in the film. On many occasions Answers in Genesis has responded to the claims that dinosaurs had feathers. One of the more recent responses can be found on our website. But there’s no evidence that dinosaurs had feathers. Such claims are just the evolutionists’ way of making the evolutionary story seem true. They so want kids to believe in evolution, this claim of dinosaurs having feathers is made very often in our day—through movies, museums, books, newspaper articles, documentaries, etc.

I saw the movie today and could not help but think that there should be evidence that any member of the ceratopsian "kind" existed with the crow "kind", elephant "kind", bear "kind"... Just look at all the types of mammalian and avian "kinds" that were supposed to be coexisting and herding with ceratopsians. The evidence for a cretaceous crow "kind" is not there.

Two members of the family Troodontidae have been found with feathers. In fact, I've found a couple of articles on AiG claiming that Anchiornis huxleyi was actually a bird. If "kinds" are generally families, then why can't other members of the Troodon "kind" have feathers or simply be considered avian "kinds" created on Day 5?

Likewise other members of the Dromaeosauridae family have been proclaimed "birds" by AiG and the evidence seems to suggest that Velociraptor might have had feathers. Why can't other members of the Dromaesauridae family/"kind" like Hesperonychus have feathers?

At least two species of the clade Oviraptorosauria are considered "flightless birds" by AiG. Why would it be so great a leap for Chirostenotes to have feathers? Typing this out, it amazes me how many members of different dinosaur clades are considered birds by AiG.

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.  

Dr Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner

Dinosaur soft tissue


The 60 minute piece

Dinosaur Feathers Preserved in Amber

Beautiful pictures

DINOSAUR FEATHERS FOUND IN AMBER: PHOTOS  By Jennifer Viegas