Story on Evolution of Birds Glosses Over Details
February 24, 2014
It takes more to turn a dinosaur into a bird than changing arm and leg ratios and reducing body size.
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Archaeopteryx May Have Devolved from a Flying Bird
November 12, 2013
In all the debates about the status of Archaeopteryx between reptiles and birds, no one till now expected this wild idea: it lost its ability to fly.
Felicitous Fossils Facilitate Phylogenetic Fabling
May 31, 2013
Here are some recent fossil finds that, whether they fit or not, are claimed to shed light on evolution.
The Evolution of Penguins
May 23, 2013
Science reporters are dancing with happy feet about a news story supposedly explaining how penguins evolved.
Dinosaur Feather Story Gets Hairy
July 2, 2012
Another "feathered dinosaur" story has caused a flap and flurry of news reports. But are they really feathers, and do they help evolutionary theory?
South Korea "Creationism" Means War
June 11, 2012
Give just one side of a controversy the press, and you will get a one-sided presentation of the issues. That happened this week in the journal Nature.
News for the Birds
January 24, 2012
Our amazing feathered friends range from tiny hummingbirds to fast-running ostriches, from penguins to pigeons. In both living and fossil forms, they provide endless opportunities for study and fascination. Here are a few recent examples of news for the birds, in both good and bad connotations of the phrase.
Amazing Bird Tricks
October 27, 2011
“Angry Birds” are perhaps the best known species among electronic bird-watchers these days, but we should never forget that real birds are amazing creatures. Incredibly diverse (think ostrich to hummingbird to penguin), they continue to fascinate scientists and laymen. Here are some recent science stories about our feathered friends.
New Fossils and Upsets
October 19, 2011
One important fossil and two stories about fossils were announced this week. They demonstrate that the fossils themselves mean nothing apart from an interpretive context.
Archaeopteryx Reclassification Raises Fear of Creationists
July 28, 2011
Archaeopteryx isn’t the first bird. At least, not today. It may be reclassified again, but Xing Xu, the man who brought a panoply of “feathered dinosaurs” to the world’s attention, has announced another Chinese fossil that led him to shuffle the bird evolution tree around, putting Archaeopteryx, an “icon of evolution” since its discovery in1861, onto a branch that includes dinosaur terrors like Deinonychus. At least, today. The backstory behind the shuffling of family trees, an upset that raises questions about everything evolutionists that they knew about the evolution of birds, is political, not scientific. Evolutionists are worried about how creationists are going to “spin” the news.