Page 103 - The Transitional Form Dilemma
P. 103
HARUN YAHYA
birds have followed hot on one another’s heels, and reconstructions and
self-confident statements by “experts” have been employed to convince
people that half-bird half-reptile creatures once roamed the Earth. But
there is not a shred of evidence for this.
Alan Feduccia, of the University of North Carolina Biology
Department, is one of the world’s most eminent authorities on the origin
of birds, whose name will appear on any list of the world’s five most em-
inent ornithologists. Dr. Feduccia believes in the theory of evolution, and
that birds themselves evolved. But what distinguishes him from the
“dino-bird” supporters and certain fanatical evolutionists is that he ad-
mits the theory of evolution’s uncertainty on this subject and attaches no
credence to the dino-bird scenario, which rests on no foundations at all.
The Auk magazine is published by The American Ornithologists’
Union and represents a floor for the most technical ornithological de-
bates. In its October 2002 edition, Dr. Feduccia’s article “Birds Are
Dinosaurs: Simple Answer to a Complex Problem,” provides some im-
portant information. He describes in detail how the theory that birds
evolved from dinosaurs, advanced by John Ostrom in the 1970s and
which has been fiercely defended ever since, lacks any scientific evi-
dence—and why such an evolution is impossible.
Dr. Feduccia is not alone in this. The evolutionist Peter Dodson, a
professor of anatomy from University of Pennsylvania, also states that
he looks with suspicion on the claim that birds evolved from theropod
dinosaurs. 61
Feduccia describes an important fact about the “dino-birds” dis-
covered in China: Even if apparently primitive feathers are found on the
fossilized reptiles which are portrayed as feathered dinosaurs , it is by
no means certain that they are bird feathers. On the contrary, there is
considerable evidence that these fossil traces, known as “dino-fuzz,”
have nothing to do with bird feathers. As Feduccia writes:
The so-called “hairy devil” pterosaur Sordes (Upper Jurassic lake deposits of
Kazakhstan) is preserved in similar lacustrine deposits and preserves struc-
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