Page 246 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

244 The Origin of Birds and Flight

CONCLUSION
Scientific evidence shows a great many reasons why dinosaurs
could not have evolved into birds. No fossil claimed to represent the
primitive ancestor of birds actually possesses any such property. The
oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, appears suddenly in the fossil record
together with its flawless flight system. No primitive bird existed before.
The recent dino-bird claims lack any scientific foundation. Alan Feduccia
comments on the despair of the adherents of the theory: “Nowhere has
the trap been more successful than in luring paleontologists to the thero-

pod dinosaurian origin of birds.” 219
In his 1999 book, Feduccia summarizes the facts regarding all these
claims:

Finally, no feathered dinosaur has ever been found, although many
dinosaur mummies with well-preserved skin are known from diverse
localities. 220
Even if these inferences about feathered dinosaurs were true, they
would still not benefit the theory of evolution. Throughout natural histo-
ry, tens of millions of species have created a broad biological spectrum,
and most of these have become extinct. Winged mammals such as the
bat are still alive today, and winged reptiles (pterosaurs) lived in the past.
A great many different marine reptiles (ichthyosaurs, for instance)
became extinct. Yet the striking aspect of this rich spectrum is how
species with vastly different characteristics or anatomical structures
appear suddenly in the record, with no primitive forms behind them.
All the complex and unique structures of bird feathers appear all at
once in Archaeopteryx. There are no primitive feathers or primitive flight.
The avian lung’s irreducibly complex structure makes any primitive
version impossible. Fossil findings continue to confirm the fact that
living things appeared on Earth through creation, not through evolution,
and no dino-bird fanfare can ever alter that truth.