Page 213 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism
P. 213
"feathered dinosaur" do not date back any more than 130 mil-
lion years. However, there is an extant fossil of a true bird at
least 20 million years older than the fossils they want to pre-
sent as a "half bird:" Archaeopteryx. Known as the oldest bird,
Archaeopteryx is a true bird with perfectly-formed flying mus-
cles, feathers for flight and a normal bird's skeleton. Since it
could soar through the skies 150 million years ago, how can
evolutionists maintain such nonsense as to present other crea-
tures that lived later in history as the primitive ancestors of
birds?
Darwinists have discovered a new method of doing so:
cladistics, which has been frequently used in paleontology
over the past few decades to interpret fossils. Those who pro-
mote this method are not interested in the fossils' age; they
only compare the measurable characteristics of extant fossils
and, on the basis of these comparisons, devise an evolutionist
family tree. Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)
This method is defended on an evolutionist Internet site
that explains the so-called rationale for positing Velociraptor,
a much younger fossil than Archaeopteryx, as the latter's an-
cestor:
Now we may ask "How can Velociraptor be ancestral to
Archaeopteryx if it came after it?"
Well, because of the many gaps in the fossil record, fossils
don't always show up "on time." For example, a recently dis-
covered partial fossil from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar,
Rahonavis, seems to be a cross between birds and something
like Velociraptor, but appears 60 million years too late. No-one
211