Ancient Birds Molted Like Modern Songbirds

Image courtesy of Durbed, CC BY-SA 3.





Joel Kontinen

Science has portrayed the 120b million of years ago as a winged dinosaur. However, the species looked just like a bird, despite its four wings. They molten just like modern bird do.

Here’ want it says:

“Fossilized plumage suggests a small, four-winged dinosaur that lived 120 millions of years ago may have shed its feathers like modern songbirds do, Science News reports. The plumage—three short feathers tucked amid much longer ones—could be the first evidence of a nonbird dinosaur molting. Songbirds lose only a few feathers at a time in a strategy known as sequential molting, which allows them to take flight yearround.

This new finding suggests Microraptor may have done the same, researchers reported this week in Current Biology. The fossilized feathers—which could push back the history of molting by 50 million years—also support the idea that the dino was a strong flyer, frequently taking to the air to find food or evade predators."

In other words: dinosaurs were dinosaurs and birds are birds.

Hicks, Lucy. 2020. This four-winged dino may have molted like modern songbirds, Science 17 July.

New research: Birds did not descend from dinosaurs but dinosaurs might have descended from birds

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Joel Kontinen

New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenges the old Darwinian dogma about birds being the descendants of dinosaurs. The dino-to-bird link has evaded extinction although evidences against it have increased in the past few years. (Read more here, here, here and here.)

Recently, Sankar Chatterjee and R. Jack Templin analyzed how well the Microraptor gui, which was found in 2003, was able to glide, and published their findings in PNAS. Computer simulations indicated that it could not have been able to take to the air from the ground but it could probably have glided down from a tree.

Several studies conducted in the past few years challenge the view that birds are descended from dinosaurs, says John Ruben, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, in a comment on the study in PNAS. ”There are just too many inconsistencies with the idea that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that”, he says. According to Ruben, ”the weight of the evidence is now suggesting that not only did birds not descend from dinosaurs, but that some species now believed to be dinosaurs may have descended from birds.”

Professor Ruben said that many small animals, for instance, velociraptors, which were thought to be dinosaurs, have been flightless birds.

In other words: dinosaurs were dinosaurs and birds are birds.

Sources:

Chatterjee, Sankar and R. Jack Templin. 2010. Biplane wing planform and flight performance of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104:5, 1576-1580 (30 January 9 http://www.pnas.org/content/104/5/1576.abstract

Study challenges bird-from-dinosaur theory of evolution - was it the other way around? Physorg 9 February 2010 http://www.physorg.com/news184959295.html