| | Archaeopteryx part 3
Other quotes from people concerning the Archaeotperyx:
"Evolution and Christian Faith" by Dr. Bolton Davidheiser Ph.D. Zoology
Johns Hopkins Univeristy. (Altho this book has an original copyright
of 1969 it is presently in its eleventh printing and is copyrighted
1986).
The derivation of birds from reptiles seems to be one of the most
thoroughly accepted sequences in evolution. Thomas Henry Huxley called
birds glorified reptiles, and this witicism is still frequently
encountered when the evolution of birds is discussed. It is commonly
stated that if the remains of Archaeopteryx ,"the earliest known bird",
had been found without feathers, it would have been reconstructed as a
bipedal reptile...
...Among living creatures birds, and only birds, have feathers.
Thus a feather defines a bird. This definition is extrapolated
backward into the past, and Archaeopteryx is called a bird. Altho' a
great many othe anatomical characteristics, including such things as
eyes, hooves, and excretory tubes, are believed to evolve separately in
different evolutionary lines, it seems that very few evolutionists have
even considered the possibility of feathers having evolved more than
once. The possibility of feathers having been created is not
considered at all, and they are usually said to have evolved from the
scales of reptiles.
Archaeopteryx had fully developed wings. Nothing has ever been
found evolving from a reptile with partially developed wings. Since
the Archaeopteryx has some reptilian characteristics and some avian
characteristics it is considered to be a link between the reptiles and
birds.
But this does not necessarily mean that it does connect the
reptiles with the birds. As previously mentioned, a fossil named
Seymouria has some amphibian-like and some reptile-like
characteristics. It seems to make a good connection between the
amphibians and reptiles, but G.F. Kerkut points out that it cannot be a
connecting link because it lived at the wrong time. If a "suitable"
fossil cannot be a connecting link because it lived at the wrong time,
it is obvious that a "suitable" fossil is not necessarily a connecting
link if it happens to live at the "right" time...
...Except for the frequently repeated statement that birds evolved
from reptiles, the evolution of birds is by no means clear in the minds
of evolutionists. J. Arthur Thomson of the University of Aberdeen
said, "Our frankness in admitting difficulties and relative ignorance
in regard to the variations and selections that led from certain
dinosaurs to birds cannot be used by any fairminded inquirer as
an argument against the idea of evolution. For hoe else could birds
have arisen?"
W.E. Swinton of the British Museum says, "With some imagination we
can link the Archaeopteryx with the forms that came later, but it
requires much speculation to see the origin of even the power of flight
this first known bird displays...None the less, nearly a century after
the publication of that monumental work [Darwin's Origin of the
Species], there are still monumental problems that remain to be settled
about the succession of life. This is especially true of the birds."
***
Concerning the use of purely skeletal remains to show evolutionary
relationships:
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis Dr. Michael Denton:
pp177-178 To demonstrate that the great divisions of nature were
really bridged by transitional forms in the past, it is not sufficient
find in the fossil record one or two types of organisms of doubtful
affinity which might be placed on skeletal grounds in a relatively
intermediate position between other groups. The systematic status and
biological affinity of a fossil organism is far more difficult to
establish than in the case of the living form, and can never be
established with any degree of certainty.
To begin with, ninety per cent of the biology
of and organism resides in its soft anatomy, which is
inaccessible in a fossil. Supposing, for example, all the marsupials
were extinct and the whole group was known only by skeletal remains- would
anyone guess that their reproductive biology was so utterly different from
that of placental mammals and in some wayseven more complex?
Modern birds differ greatly from reptiles in many physiological and
anatonomical characteristics, particularly, for example, in their central
nervous, cardiovascular and respiratory systems... but, because
information about the soft biology of a fossil form is difficult to
obtain from its skeletal remains, to what extent Archaeopteryx was avian
in its major organ systems will always be largely a matter of conjecture.
One aspect of an organism's soft biology which can be sometimes
studied in a fossil is the gross morphology of the brain. This can be
done by preparing a cranial endocast of the intracranial cavity in the
skull which reveals the gross shape and outline of the brain. On the
evidence available from study of the cranial endocast of Archaeopteryx ,
it would seem that its brain was essentially avian in all important
repects, exhibiting typical avian cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum (the
part of the brain involved in balance and the coordination of fine motor
activities), a part of the brain proportionally larger in birds than in
any other class of vertebrates and generally considered to be an
adaptation necessary for the control of the highly complex motor
activities involved in powered flight. The possession of an essentially
avian central nervous system lends furthur support to the idea based on
the basically modern form of its flight feathers and wing, that
Archaeopteryx was as capable of powered flight as a typical modern bird.
If Archaeopteryx was indeed capable of powered flight, might it not also
have possessed, of necessity, a fully avian heart, circulatory and
respiratory system to supply the vastly increased demand for oxygen that
occurs during powered flight? In other words, might it not have been as
avian as any other bird in all important anatomical and physiological
characteristics?
Then there is the problem of convergence. Nature abounds in examples
of convergence: the similarity in the overall shape of whales,
ichthyosaurs and fishes; the similarity in the bone structure of the
flippers of the whale and an icthyosaur; the similarity of the forelimbs
of a mole and those of the insect, the molecricket; the great similarity
in the design of the eye in vertebrates and cephalopods and the profound
parallelism between the cochlea in birds and mammals. In all the above
cases the similarities, although very striking, DO NOT IMPLY CLOSE
BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP.[authors emphasis, not mine- G.F.] pp 194-5.
It is possible to allude to a number of species and
groups such as Archaeopteryx, or the rhipidistian fish, which
appear to some extent intermediate. But even if such were
intermediate to some degree, there is no evidence that they are any
more intermediate than groups such as the living lungfish or
monotremes which, as we have seen, are not only tremendously
isolated from their nearest cousins, but which have individual
organ systems that are not strictly transitional at all. As
evidence for the existence of natural links between the great
divisions of nature, they are only convincing to someone already
convinced of the reality of organic evolution. ../
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