Page 213 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

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Latest Research Has Dealt a Severe Blow
to Feathered Dinosaur Claims

The fossilized structures referred to as dinosaur feathers were shown by
Theagarten (Solly) Lingham-Soliar, a paleontologist from Durban-Westville
University in South Africa to be nothing more than decayed connective tissue.
Professor Lingham-Soliar performed an experiment by burying a dolphin
in river mud, semi-permeable to air for a year. The reason a dolphin was
selected was that its flesh is easy to analyze. At the end of this period, the
professor examined the dolphin’s bunches of collagen—which constitutes
connective tissue in the bodies of most living things— under a microscope.
According to him, the decayed collagen in the dolphin’s body bore “a strik-
ing resemblance to feathers.”1
The German magazine Naturwissenschaften commented that: “The find-
ings throw serious doubt on the virtually complete reliance on visual image by
supporters of the feathered dinosaur thesis and emphasize the need for more
rigorous methods of identification using modern feathers as a frame of refer-
ence.” 2
With this finding, it emerged that even a dolphin could leave behind traces
of apparent feathers. This once again showed that there are no grounds for
regarding extinct dinosaurs with “feathers” as proto-birds.

1. Stephen Strauss, “Buried dolphin corpse serves science,” 11 November 2003;
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031111/UDINO11/TPScience/
2. Ibid.