Birds are animals with very special features such as feathers, special lungs, and light body structures. Evolutionists believe that birds evolved from reptiles or maybe even a type of dinosaur. Archaeopteryx is thought to be the first flying bird. Archaeopteryx has feathers like a bird but the skeleton of a small dinosaur. Archaeopteryx lived 150 million years ago and had many features of a reptile. Its fossil was found in 1861.
Archaeopteryx had fully formed flying feathers, asymmetric vanes and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern birds. The classical elliptical wings of today’s woodland birds, and a large wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible for down stroke of the wings. In June of 1998 two fossils were found in Northern China that are claimed to be feathered theropods. The fossils, Prot archaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryxzoui are claimed to be the immediate ancestors of the first birds. The two latest finds are dated at 120 to 136 million years while Archaeopteryx, a true bird, is dated at 140 to 150 million years, making these birds ancestors far younger than their descendants.
Paleontologist Larry Martin, and Alan Feduccia a world authority on birds reject the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. They believe that birds evolved from small reptiles called crocodilomorphs. They say that these small crocodile like reptiles lived in trees and leaped from tree to tree and than glided from tree to tree and than eventually start to fly. This process took many millions of years. A man named Richard Dawkins says that feathers are modified reptilian scales. But I thought that scales were folds in the skin and feathers were complex structures with barb, barbule’s, and hooks.
The Essay on Dinosaurs and Birds
... reptiles (dinosaurs) and birds. The main difference between the theropods and Archaeopteryx were the long arms of the Archaeopteryx, adapted as wings, the feathers, ... some 75 million years after Archaeopteryx. Also, support is gaining that Archaeopteryx was not in fact the first bird, but ... reptile from a time before dinosaurs came to be. One point they make is that flight must have begun from tree ...
But for scales to have evolved into feathers means that a significant amount of genetic information had to arise in the bird’s DNA which present in that of its alleged reptile ancestor. What I think is that gliders did eventually turn into flyer because of survival reasons. Maybe because they need to get higher away from a praetor or maybe transportation reasons. I guess that man may never know where these beautiful creatures came from..
