The documentary film 'Clan of the Cave Bear' already established that birds walked with dinosaurs. I'm not sure why this scientist is so excited.
Dino-boffins discover 100-million-year-old BIRD TRACKS in Australia
Two thin-toed tracks made more than 100 million years ago are proof birds wandered prehistoric Australia, according to palaeoboffins. Photo of the sandstone fossil along with a drawing illustrating the track Photo of the sandstone fossil along with a drawing illustrating the track. Credit: Anthony Martin Emory University …
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Monday 11th November 2013 16:06 GMT t.est
He's excited about the fact that birds flew during the dino era.
According to evolutionists birds are a result of reptiles evolving to birds, basically dinos became birds. But this shows that birds did fly already while dinos walked, before they had learned to fly.
So in a scientific world, he's unwrapping a significant if not revolutionary find. That's why he's excited about it.
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Tuesday 29th October 2013 13:22 GMT ratfox
Mandatory XKCD
Dinosaurs are still living among us, for birds are dinosaurs.
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Tuesday 29th October 2013 21:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "birds are dinosaurs"
"Especially the cassowaries."
I'm all for that Mr Mr Grumblefish. But first show, scientifically that it's Dinosaur -> Cassowarie (ancestor) -> (other) Bird. And not Dinosaur -> (other) Bird -> Cassowarie (ancestor).
That's the massive problem with our identification system. We identify by what we see, and not necessarily by what is scientifically sound. :(
PS, thanks for the Edit option Reg! I could come back to edit missing out that any reference to historic animals are of cause going to be ancestors of existing ones, not necessarily identical.
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Tuesday 29th October 2013 15:50 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: 100 million years ago! @Don
But El Reg Standard Units are mandatory for the Church of El Reg.
I could not find one for time anywhere on the site. I humbly submit the birdage for large units of time, being equivalent to the measure from the Early Cretaceous until now. For example, "The universe is roughly 138 birdages old."
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 01:43 GMT dan1980
Re: 100 million years ago! @Don
"The universe is roughly 138 birdages old."
I was going to suggest 'Wagners' (Wa) but I realise now that it lacks granularity when compared to 'birdages'. By my system, the universe would be 1Wa* old.
Makes the maths easier on a cosmic time scale but I appreciate not very useful for geological time.
* - Technically, 0.9992Wa but close enough.
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 20:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Vestigial?
Ah the myth of inevitable progress. How do we know it wasn't better than a bird's foot?
Are you are postulating that dinosaurs died out due unsuitable feet?
Has anyone done any analysis regarding whether any animal has become extinct due to a particular body part, without the intervention of irrational people?
The appears to be little correlation between complexity and age.
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Friday 1st November 2013 02:58 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Vestigial?
Progress is not an inherently positive thing, it is only the movement towards a goal. In evolution the goal being adaptation to better suit the current overall situation. There is no 'forward' or 'backward', only (more) appropriate for the situation.
Also, the Great Panda is going extinct because they are too lazy to fuck. So yes. A particular part of anatomy can cause a species to die out.
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Tuesday 29th October 2013 20:16 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Bah!
Indeed. Evolution is such an amazing process. To think that one day a dinosaur egg hatched and, SURPRISE a fully formed animal of a different species pops out of the egg. That's how evolution works, right?
Maybe you've stumbled onto why there are no more dinosaurs. In a bit of shortsightedness, the females were all killed after their mates strongly suspected them of inter species infidelity.
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 02:11 GMT dan1980
Re: Clearly not a bird
That website is a good example of Poe's Law.
Other examples from that site are:
And so on. All follow the same basic format of presenting several loosely related 'facts' and then tying them together into a rather inventive conclusion before demanding to know why we are all being kept in the dark and no one is reporting on it, ending with a promise that these luminaries and fighter for truth will "be monitoring the situation, and will report back".
I went from: "Kooks" to "No, those articles are too crazy", back to ". . . but they've written quite a few articles - perhaps they're legit" and finally to "Damn you Poe!".
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 11:37 GMT Pascal Monett
They didn't hear nothing - they're making it up
The Atlantis article states that some Georgia Tech scientist is monitoring the Santorini volcano crater and is detecting signs of an imminent, ginormous explosion.
On the other hand, Wikipedia states that the isle is currently dormant.
I'll put my money on the wiki this time.
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 11:59 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Clearly not a bird
You should read the Conservapedia entry for Poe's law... My wife heard someone mention Poe's law only very recently and the same time she discovered Conservapedia trying to figure out what the law said. She sent me an email "Have you heard of this"? with a link to the Conservapedia entry and I thought she was actually putting Poe's law into action in an intentionally hilarious way. She wasn't, but it was still funny.
She now uses Conservapedia in the class she teaches on bias in scientific writing, which angered a student earlier this year, and that was intentionally hilarious.
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 15:19 GMT stu 4
Oh dear
Seriously though - this is why palaeontology isn't a science.
Maybe he has hit on a 'theory' that is true - but the scientific method is clearly a stranger at his door.
I reckon we should rename the free 'ologys' that are actually scientific to make it clearer for the vast majority that are shite/artistic/creative/non-scientific..
astrology
Egyptology
palaeontology
archaeology....
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Wednesday 30th October 2013 20:36 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Oh dear
Yep. It was much better when everything related to the study of the natural world was classified as philosophy and you branched out from there into either more or less structured disciplines. That little bit of higher level taxonomy really made individual fields of study easier and more accurate to classify.
I'm not sure when the move towards philosophy being considered 'analysis of thought' vs study of the natural world happened, but it was a bad move. Hell, most people don't know the P in PhD is for philosophy. If I told the average person on the street I was a Doctor of Philosophy they'd think I was some kind of new age nutter.
In fact, the narrow contemporary view of the word philosophy is so wonky here in the US it forced a fairly significant late stage rework of the Harry Potter series US release because it was decided Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone would confuse us, hence it is now Sorcerers Stone here. God our education system has failed so badly.
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