In a new study, researchers examined the fossil of a 140-million-year-old turkey-size dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx.
Other experts had previously concluded that distinctive patterns found on the skin of a Sinosauropteryx fossil were remnants of downy protofeathers, making the species the most primitive feathered dinosaur.
But the new team says that their analysis shows that the creature was actually bald.
The patterns are the remains of "structural fibers, probably collagen—the most abundant fiber in vertebrates—of the skin and the dorsal frill," said lead study author Theagarten Lingham-Soliar of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
As seems to be the way with science these days the popular theory is opposed by a small cadre of those following evidence rather than the latest trends. I once read an article in which a palaeontologist spoke of a particular species of dinosaur possessing proto-feathers; this despite the fact that there were actual fossilised remains of said dinosaur's skin proving that it had no such features."The existence of protofeathers in these dinosaurs was considered critical evidence that birds were derived from dinosaurs," said study co-author Alan Feduccia, a bird evolution expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"What we have shown is that there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that protofeathers existed in dinosaurs, period."
But the majority of scientists in the field are unconvinced.
Of course they are! Heaven forbid that some evidence actually get in the way of a preconceived notion. When did science become a field in which alluring theories were held more dearly than data? Wouldn't it be nice if scientists were, oh I don't know, open-minded?
2 comments:
In realscience someone sees markings. A few people theorise and then test the theories until they all disappear or one is proven then we say the marking are believed to be or the marking are caused by. Until something else is discovered.
It's not like climate science where someone comes up with a theory. We are told what it is by people with an agenda and then told we can't discuss or test the explaination, not theory, as that would imply there was doubt.
Bring on real science any day.
"As seems to be the way with science these days the popular theory is opposed by a small cadre of those following evidence rather than the latest trends."
You support YE-Creationism then? It pretty much claims to be the same thing.
But the new study falls short because it relies only on microscopic analysis, with no additional CAT scans or chemical tests, he said.
"They merely looked at the tissues and said, Oh, they're straight and well organized … it must be collagen," Unwin said.
This doesn't sound like solid evidence to me. It's the same argument Feduccia used when it was first discovered!
And what about the many other dinosaurs that appear to have been feathered?
That means deinonychosaurs and oviraptorosaurs, Several of which, like Caudipteryx, are preserved with modern looking flight feathers. Some of these dinosaurs, like Sinornithosaurus and Microraptor, look like scaled-down versions of larger animals like Velociraptor.
Feduccia, the study co-author, says these creatures are actually descendants of birds that lost their ability to fly.
"When they become flightless, they superficially resemble small dinosaurs," he said.
What does this mean?
Many of these dinosaurs are obviously related to each other, so in order to get scaly Cold-blooded Tyrannosauroids you're gonna have to turn Deinonychus, Velociraptor and Oviraptor into flightless birds!
Heaven forbid that some evidence actually get in the way of a preconceived notion. When did science become a field in which alluring theories were held more dearly than data? Wouldn't it be nice if scientists were, oh I don't know, open-minded?
One could only hope this would apply to the general Spielberg watching public as well.
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