Joel Kontinen
It seems that each new fossil discovery presents a fresh dilemma for Darwinian evolution. Two exceedingly well-preserved bird fossils found in an ancient lake-bed in Wyoming are no exceptions.
A paper published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History describes a bird now known as Calciavis grandei.
At least the first part of the name is a misnomer. Calci means ‘hard’ or ‘stone’ and avis ‘bird’, but according to a report posted on Science Daily, the specimens are “completely intact with bones, feathers, and soft tissues.”
The flightless birds are roughly the size of a chicken. They are assumed to be “50 million years” old and relatives of ostriches.
Ostriches are flightless African birds, but some of their cousins must have succeeded in getting over to America, or evolution had to find another solution to their close kinship with the Calciavis grandei.
Darwinians will now have to choose to believe in either rafting or convergent evolution.
1. The birds rafted from Africa, much like the old world monkeys had to do, as a wide ocean separated Africa and South America.
While continental drift might have brought the continents a bit closer, hundreds of kilometres still separated them. The birds would have been expert mariners.
Evolutionists also have to assume that tarsiers rafted from Asia to Africa and back again – several times, that old world monkeys rafted to South America and then either swam or rafted to Central America.
2. The birds evolved in both Africa and America. While Darwinists often invoke convergent evolution, it makes their case even less credible.
So, they’re welcome to pick their favourite fable. In either case, it’s anything but credible.
Source:
Virginia Tech. 2016. Ostrich relative lived in North America about 50 million years ago. Science Daily. (5 July).
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