Page 195 - The Transitional Form Dilemma

HARUN YAHYA

nounced the error, “Hesperopithecus: Apparently Not an Ape, Nor a

Man.” 191 In conclusion, all the pictures of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and
his family were swiftly withdrawn from the literature.

The Fake Dino-Bird
The Fake Dino-Bird
Unable to find what they sought in Archaeopteryx, the proponents
of the theory of evolution pinned their hopes on certain other fossils in
the 1990s. A string of “dino-bird fossil” claims began appearing in the
media in those years. It was shortly realized, however, that all these
claims were the work of misinterpretation, and even of fraud.
The first example of these dino-bird claims came with the story of
the fossil feathered dinosaur found in China, which appeared in 1996 to
great media attention. A fossil reptile given the name Sinosauropteryx
had been found, although some evolutionist paleontologists who exam-
ined the fossil suggested that it actually had bird feathers, unlike all

known reptiles. Studies performed the following year, however, re-
vealed that the fossil possessed no feature resembling bird feathers.
An article called “Plucking the Feathered Dinosaur” in Science
magazine stated that the structures perceived as feathers by evolution-
ist paleontologists actually had nothing to do with feathers at all:
Exactly 1 year ago, paleontologists were abuzz about photos of a so-called
“feathered dinosaur,” which were passed around the halls at the annual meet-
ing of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The Sinosauropteryx specimen
from the Yixian Formation in China made the front page of The New York
Times, and was viewed by some as confirming the dinosaurian origins of birds.
But at this year’s vertebrate paleontology meeting in Chicago late last month,
the verdict was a bit different: The structures are not modern feathers, say the
roughly half-dozen Western paleontologists who have seen the specimens. . . .
Larry Martin of Kansas University, Lawrence, thinks the structures are frayed
collagenous fibers beneath the skin 192
An even greater dino-bird storm erupted in 1998. In its July edition

193