Page 101 - The Evolution Impasse 2

Origin of the Bird Feathers 99

far too com plex to be ex plained by the feath er its aer o dy nam ic prop er -
means of any ev o lu tion a ry proc ess. ties. Even more in ter est ing ly, on
The well known or ni thol o gist Alan each barb are even small er struc -
Feduccia does not con sid er it prob a - tures known as bar bul es, too small
ble that a tis sue so well suit ed for to be seen with the na ked eye. On all
flight could have emerged in i tial ly of these bar bul es are ti ny hooks,
to serve an oth er pur pose (for ex am - thanks to which the bar bul es are
ple, in su la tion, as is claimed by ev o - held to geth er tight ly, as if by zip -
lu tion ists). As he says: "Everything pers.
about them in di cates an aer o dy nam - There are 650 barbs on ei ther side
ic func tion... They're light weight, of a stork feath er's stem. Each one
they're ex cel lent air foils, they pro - has 600 con tra posed bar bul es, at -
duce high lift at low speeds, and tached to one an oth er by 390 hooks
they have a Velcro-like qual i ty that which, again, cling to geth er like the
lets them be re as sem bled." 95 two sides of a zip per. If the hooks
In ad di tion, a long, stiff tube runs be come de tached from one an oth er,
along the cen ter of the feath er. From the bird has on ly to shake it self or
both sides of this tube emerge hun - groom its feath ers with its beak for
dreds of barbs. These barbs, which them to re at tach.
have dif fer ing lengths and de - To main tain that such a com plex
grees of soft ness, give struc ture evolved as the re sult of
ran dom mu ta tions from rep tile
scales is sim ply a dog mat ic be lief,
based on no sci en tif ic foun da tion at
all.

The scales cov er ing the bod ies of rep -
tiles are dif fer ent from bird feath ers in
ev ery re spect. Unlike feath ers, scales
do not ex tend be neath the skin, con -
sist ing sole ly of a hard lay er on the
sur face of on an i mal's skin. They bear
no re sem blance to bird feath ers, ge net -
i cal ly, bi o chem i cal ly, nor an a tom i cal ly.
This enor mous dif fer ence be tween
scales and feath ers whol ly in val i dates
the sce nar io of ev o lu tion from rep tiles
to birds.
Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar