Dino Feathered Tail found in Amber

Hi 4Ever2. The Archaopteryx fossils found in China show that some mammals were growing feathers, a prelude to jumping heights and eventually evolving into birds.

stardesk wrote:Hi 4Ever2. The Archaopteryx fossils found in China show that some mammals were growing feathers, a prelude to jumping heights and eventually evolving into birds.

Um what the Actual Fuck, that sentence is WRONG so WRONG

Archaopteryx was in Germany, there has been more recent bird/dinosaur transitionary speices found in China
SO not a Bird yet and NOT in anyway a MAMMAL
No Mammal Ever has had feathers
Mammals Evolved Fur

And nothing to do with Jumping high, it would have lived in Forests and glided from tree to tree much like modern Sugar gliders and Flying lizards.

Archaopteryx Evolved FLIGHT feathers implying that insulator down feathers existed already
this Fossil Is evidnece of Down feathers on a NON-winged dinosaur which Implies Many Dinosaurs had these down feather like modern mammals have fur.

Like 4ever said
T-rex probably looked more like a giant Chicken, interestingly there is no way of knowing if it had a comb like mordern roosters.
which does really change the image.

WOW, don't have a 'COW MAN' ...it might have just been something that he read that scrolled by on FB, doesn't mean Stardesk got it all wrong! 
Good Grief, Veya ...my Short Term Memory ain't what it used to be ...but my long term memory is SHARP as a TACK!    LMAO 

But it still IRKS me, that Hollywood seems to be obsessed with making T-Rex roar with an audio intensity of all those combinations of sounds; when it most likely chirped because of the size of the voice box and lung capacity! 

Stardesk makes a big deal about Believing in 'evolution' as if it were a religion and then goes on to post a Spectacularly ignorant post that highlights a significant lack of knowledge about evolutionary record.
 
AND literally every single thing in the sentence is wrong.
 
Germany not China
 
No Mammal ever has grown feathers. Mammals Evolved Fur. both use the same chemicals and are the evolution of scales that most early non-Molluscs had.
 
we actually Know Archaopteryx lived and evolved in 'Jurassic Bavaria' which would have been Similar to modern day Florida in Climate/landscape.
 
Like almost all simple flyers it evolved to glide from tree to tree or around rocky cliff faces (much like early bats or the Pterosaur Prior to it) 
 
No larger animal(not sure about bugs)  has gone from jump height to Flight, it is simply not the way it evolves, gliding get more and more efficient until aerial propulsion is developed (flapping that creates enough lift to keep them airborne) and then you get true flight.

Veya, you're quite right in correcting me over China/Germany. I wasn't thinking properly.

These features make Archaeopteryx a clear candidate for a transitional fossil between non-avian dinosaurs and birds.[6][7] Thus, Archaeopteryx plays an important role, not only in the study of the origin of birds, but in the study of dinosaurs. It was named from a single feather in 1861.[8] That same year, the first complete specimen of Archaeopteryx was announced. Over the years, ten more fossils of Archaeopteryx have surfaced. Despite variation among these fossils, most experts regard all the remains that have been discovered as belonging to a single species, although this is still debated.

Most of these eleven fossils include impressions of feathers. Because these feathers are of an advanced form (flight feathers), these fossils are evidence that the evolution of feathers began before the Late Jurassic.

quite right stardesk that is what makes this such an important find in fossil record.
the fact that we are seeing fully formed down feathers like this also suggests that they are already 'the norm' when this dinosaur was alive.
when combined with the fact feathers have been found with such geogphical distribution.
we really need to re think the what dinosaurs looked like, they should have features more like birds, which also makes T-rexs tiny arms more logical, if you have ever seen a magpie hunt on the ground

NOW we know what HA's "pet is then...


Its NOT a damn great rooster at all........

Hi Veya. Magpies are one of my favourite birds. Recently we've had one coming into the garden, taking advantage of the food I put out for other birds. BTW, I've been a bird-watcher for many years until lately my health isn't what it used to be, so it's feet up and turn the telly on.

Here's a few more transitionals. One of my favourites is the Baleen whale. It has legs and feet inside its flippers, demonstrating it was once a land animal.

Anchiornis ~155 million years agoAlthough many feathered dinosaurs are known, Anchiornis is the first to be found that probably predates Archaeopteryx. The feathers were "not obviously flight-adapted" (Hu et al, 2009). Archaeopteryx ~145 myaThe famous Archaeopteryx had feathers and was probably capable of at least gliding, but it also had dinosaur-like teeth, claws, and a long bony tail. Its skeleton was "almost identical to that of some theropod dinosaurs" (Coyne, 2009). Precisely how closely related it is to the main line of bird evolution remains the subject of controversy (Xu et al, 2011). Confuciusornis ~125 myaConfuciusornis had a bird-like tail and a pygostyle, which is a feature of modern birds. It retained dinosaur-like claws (Prothero, 2007). It had strong shoulder bones, but was probably not capable of true flapping flight (Senter, 2006). It may have glided. It is the earliest known bird with a toothless beak, but other lineages continued to have teeth for a long time. Sinornis ~110 mya?Sinornis "still had teeth, an unfused tarsometatarsus, and an unfused pelvis" (Prothero, 2007) but resembled modern birds in other ways, with reduced vertebrae, a flexible wishbone, a shoulder joint adapted for flying, and hand bones fused into a carpometacarpus (Prothero, 2007). Vorona ~80 mya?The legs of Vorona are all that we have (Benton, 2005), but they show a combination of bird characteristics and maniraptoran (dinosaur) characteristics (Forster et al, 1996). Ichthyornis ~80 myaA strong flyer, Ichthyornis was very nearly a modern bird (Prothero, 2007), and yet it still had teeth.
As birds evolved from dinosaurs, and required feathers to fly, the existance of non-flying, feathered dinosaurs is a prediction of evolution. Happily, we have now discovered a significant number of such dinosaurs, one of which, Mei long, was even found curled-up in a remarkably bird-like sleeping position (picture here).

The first feathered dinosaurs found were more recent than Archaeopteryx — feathered dinosaurs didn't die out as soon as birds evolved — but we now have Anchiornis, which has shown that feathered dinosaurs did indeed exist before Archaeopteryx.

HI,Stardesk , some months back I put out seed for the small birds,Blue Tits, Robins wag tails ect. It did not take long before Wood Pigeon found it , and then the Magpies came. Now every Morning the maggies line up on the fence waiting for me to fill the seed container. If I am a bit late I get a Magpies "telling off". Noisy sods.

Hi Nicko. Yes Maggies are noisy with their cackling call. What has surprised me is despite Pigeons usually chasing other birds off the bird-seed table one Pigeon and one Dove seem to have come to some kind of friendship. They both feed together without argueing and pecking at each other which is a surprise and unusual. We also get Sparrows, Bluetits, Robins, Blackbirds and Starlings. Not long ago we saw a Sparrow-Hawk bomb down and grab a Sparrow. I have 2 feeders hanging in a tree with fatballs in them which the Sparrows love. This year and for the first time a pair of Blue-Tits nested in the nest box.