Feathered dinosaur tail inside amber

Oh, he thinks that isn’t a problem: “What’s the big deal this time? It’s the supposed lack of fusion in the sample’s vertebrae. Supposedly this proves that it’s a feathered dinosaur, not a bird. Keep in mind that the sample is only about 1.5 inches long (3.5 cm) and contains only 8 vertebrae, but most importantly it is from the mid-tail, not the end where we expect to see fusion.”

I’m guessing the feathers of emus, cassowaries, and kiwis are similar to ancient non-flight feathers. Is that right?

I believe that these birds lost the power of flight at some time in their evolutionary history.

The feather type that makes flight possible is the asymmetrical contour feather. Other kinds of feathers include semiplume, down, filoplume, and bristle.

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Oh right! I never really paid attention to feathers, so now I just realize that birds have different types of feathers on their bodies which should have been obvious to me.

If I’m not mistaken, the main type of feathers on kiwis, emus, and cassowaries are bristle feathers. I suppose some dinosaurs had that as well.

Of course the feathers inside this amber are not bristle feathers, but I speculate that the first dinosaurs to sport feathers had something like bristle feathers, but I don’t know if my idea is correct.

To whom it may concern.

A while back there was an article in Scientific American which described how dinosaurs became birds. At the time I wrote an essay for this blog which referred to that article and another older article.

I found the older article on the Scientific American website under the title “how Dinosaurs Shrank and Became Birds,” from Quanta Magazine , June 2015.

I should be noted that birds developed originally at a time when climate became colder, so some dinosaurs developed feathers and became smaller to protect against the colder weather. Others became bigger to also protect against the cold, but this trend worked against them in the longer run.

Here’s AIG’s write-up. Thoughts?

I always love the cherry-picking of mainstream science to support their hack-job contentions. But of course they reject the context of the data they are cherry-picking and don’t seem to be bothered by logical leaps that seem to go something like. “We’ve found birds trapped in amber therefore another thing trapped in the same kind of amber must also be a bird.” Really. I don’t see how anyone reading this thinks it counts as “support,” but I guess it makes sense to them . “Here’s a 99 million year old bird to compare to this 99 million year old dinosaur to prove it’s a bird. Of course they don’t have the same vertebrae structure and neither is really 99 million years old, probably only a couple thousand years old, but abra-cadabre wa-la, this dinosaur is obviously a bird.” (Brain explodes.)

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http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31193-9

I’m trying to find anything about Xing finding c.99 myo bird wings and bones in the citation AIG offers (which is Xing et. al.'s original paper; I’ve linked it above). I’m finding nothing akin to the AIG claims. Maybe Xing has another article elsewhere and claims thus, but not in the citation. Likewise, AIG’s Dr. Menton (who, as @Swamidass may be interested to learn, previously worked for WashU’s School of Medicine?) seems to be downplaying (among other things) the distinctions between present bird feather structure and mid-Cretaceous feather structure. As a sidebar: as a theologian, I know positively nothing about feather structure. But as someone who reads plenty (and who has done it before on papers), I can sense when rhetoric is attempting to make up for evidence.

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It should be noted that the fossil is not a whole dinosaur tail, but rather only a small piece of a tiny feathered tail measuring about 1.4 inches in length and containing 8 vertebrae, each about the size of a grain of rice!

Rhetorically downplaying the significance of even the smallest facts, data, and evidences?

It is estimated that this would make this presumed relative of T. rex about the size of a sparrow. The tail piece is undoubtedly covered with tiny feathers that are essentially identical to those of modern birds, but is this in fact a dinosaur tail rather than a bird tail?

Again downplaying the significance of the find by saying it’s too small. There’s also a hint at subterfuge in this quote. “Presumed relative of T. rex”: Xing et. al. never claim it is a first or second cousin of the T. rex. The implied argument is a straw-man. “Essentially identical to those of modern birds” is likewise not a claim of Xing’s but an uncritical, undocumented statement on the part of Dr. Menton. In fact, Xing et. al. claim quite the opposite. I quote from their “Supplemental Information” pages 10-11:

Additional details on taxonomic placement

There are several lines of evidence pertaining to the systematic position of the specimen. First, based on the preserved length of the tail and available measurements of the preserved caudal vertebrae, we estimate that a complete caudal series is likely to comprise more than 25 caudal vertebrae, which indicates the specimen more likely to be a non-avialan theropod as there is only one known avian species (i.e., Jeholornis) with more than 25 caudal vertebrae. Second, there is a distinctive ventral groove on the caudal centra of the specimen, which is widely distributed among non-avialan theropods but which has yet to be reported in avialans (though the possibility of its presence in the two known long-tailed birds Archaeopteryx and Jeholornis cannot be excluded). Third, all preserved tail feathers lack closed vanes, a defining character of flight feathers within the Pennaraptora. This suggests that the new specimen is probably more stemward than known pennaraptorans, a systematic inference consistent with osteological criteria. Furthermore, the presence of open vanes (indicated by the barb arrangements on either side of the rachis and the presence of barbules) suggests that the specimen is more crownward than compsognathids and tyrannosauroids (and maybe even ornithomimosaurs, which have been suggested to have some kind of pennaceous feathers). Taken together, the available osteological and integumentary features suggest that the specimen is probably a maniraptoran more crownward than compsognathids and tyrannosauroids (maybe even ornithomimosaurs) and perhaps more stemward than oviraptorosaurs.

However, the juvenile nature of the specimen might weaken this systematic hypothesis. The extremely small size of the specimen suggests that it is a juvenile. The longest measurable caudal is about 4 mm and we believe it is from the posterior part of the caudal series (because the succeeding caudals start to decrease the size). All known adult theropods including the two known long-tailed birds Archaeopteryx and Jeholornis have much longer posterior caudal vertebrae (e.g., 17 mm in J. palmapenis [S11]). If the specimen is a juvenile maniraptoran, it is possible that it may exhibit less complex feathers as a result of its ontogenetic stage. However, there are three lines of evidence that suggest the plumage is representative of the adult morphology regardless of the juvenile nature of the specimen. First, Similicaudipteryx fossils show that even juveniles of non-avialan theropods have pennaceous feathers (the late juvenile individual has typical flight feathers with closed vanes). Second, in extant birds the flight feathers (including tail feathers) have closed vanes with pennaceous barbules once they have replaced the plumulaceous neoptile feathers. Third, there is no evidence from modern feathers to support the idea that the largely symmetrical and somewhat pennaceous barbules seen in DIP-V-15103 might transform into a different type of pennaceous barbules (i.e., asymmetrical pennaceous barbules capable of forming a flight feather with closed vanes) during a later moult.

I digress.

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My thought was, bird or dinosaur? To-may-toe , to-maa-to, as maybe birds are dinos, but then to just discard the age of the specimen without scientific support for an alternate date is not good. Of course, since there is no scientific support for a young earth date…

It does really call into question our ideas of what dinosaurs looked like. Perhaps a wide range of colors and patterns, some with plumes, some just furry with down, some with feathers that bristled when aroused or angered, some with scales with feathery edges. Amazing to consider.

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Busted. Darn primary source fact checkers.

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BioLogos post (by @sbodbyl) about dino tail coming tomorrow.

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We do have a good idea of what dinosaurs looked like. There are very good reconstructions, and these can be updated with new discoveries. We know that the dino Microraptor had iridescent feathers in hues of black and blue, just like a crow. Read about it here, where you can get a copy of the pdf. This is from 4 years ago.

We have a VERY good idea of what they looked like…

via GIPHY

So glad I got this to work #WorthIt

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I should have said, “Non-evangelicals have a good idea of what they [dinosaurs] looked like.”

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Here’s the BioLogos article: Scientists Find Feathered Dinosaur Tail Preserved in Amber - Article - BioLogos.

I recommend checking out the posts by YEC scientists linked in the BioLogos post. Even they think that AiG, ICR, and others were hasty and sloppy in their rejection of the dino identification. Fascinating.

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Well, I think most people (general public) evangelical or not still see them as giant green scaly lizards.

That is certainly the likely case, as we see strong evidence of poorer flight ability in the earliest fossil relatives of birds, and stronger dromaeosaurian characteristic to their anatomy

ICR’s was most demonstrably hastily written.