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.