Page 192 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

190 The Origin of Birds and Flight

mined that the fossil—had been tampered with. Yet all this was ignored,
and the fossil was bought on the Chinese black market for $80,000 by
Stephen Czerkas, an American museum staffer with no scientific
research to his name, and illegally smuggled out of China, as are so
many other specimens.
Stephen Czerkas then applied to scientific journals to publish arti-
cles about the fossil. Two magazines he contacted, Nature and Science,
stated they would not publish the report until initial examinations had
been carried out under paleontological rules.
Czerkas was determined to have the fossil publicized, however,
and ignored the objections, submitting it to National Geographic maga-
zine, well-known for its support for the theory of evolution.
National Geographic was well aware that under Chinese law, it was
illegal for the fossil to be taken out of the country, and fossil smuggling
was declared a severe crime sometimes even punishable by death. 153
Even so, the magazine accepted the smuggled fossil and introduced it to
the media at a press conference at the magazine’s headquarters in
October 1999. National Geographic used the seven-page report relating the
dino-bird myth as its November 1999 cover story, suggesting that the
claim that birds had evolved from dinosaurs now rested on concrete
fossil evidence.
The author of the article, National Geographic writer Christopher P.
Sloan, believed so strongly in his interpretation that he wrote: “we can
now say that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that
humans are mammals.”
This species, said to have lived 125 million years ago, was given the
scientific name of Archaeoraptor liaoningensis. The fossil was put on
display in the National Geographic’s museum and depicted to visitors as
evidence for evolution.
The University of Kansas paleontologist Larry Martin commented
on the forced interpretation and biased nature of this feathered dinosaur
by saying, “To the people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a
feathered dinosaur.” 154