Posted: Dec 14, 2014 9:39 pm
Jerome Da Gnome wrote:What we are doing here is to examine the claim concerning DNA showing the transitional dino-birds.
It doesn't show transition it shows relatedness.
We started with the fossils, when that fell on its face with the initiation being a hoax, the claim was made fossils were not needed, DNA could be used.
Hardly the initiation. The first feathered dinosaur fossils were discovered in the 1860's. And Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was not a hoax, it was a fraud put together by illegal fossil hunters to make more money. The fossil hunters knew what the scientists where looking for so they put something like it together. No experts were fooled by the fraud, and it was never purported be anything other than a fraud by qualified researchers.
All that said, the front half and the back half of the fraud, though they didn't belong to the same animal, are separately evidence of the evolution of birds from dinosaur ancestors. The front half being a fossil from around 120mya of an early bird with theropod like teeth. The back half, the feathered tail, being an older fossil of small raptor.
We are talking about science. An examination of the data so as to determine the validity of a theory.
Yes, and the preponderance of the evidence says that birds are descended from theropods. Morphology comparing theropod fossils to modern birds, fossils of theropods with feathers, early birds with theropod teeth, then throw in the phylogenetics that confirmed a prediction that the the DNA of the fossils and that of modern birds would be similar enough establish the relationship.
Something that has been missed in this by you is that if there hadn't been those similarities in the DNAs the whole birds from dinosaur hypothesis would have been falsified and a new path of avian evolution would have to be looked for.