Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs Slowly—Then Took Off

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: Krazysh0t

Alright I'll ask a question and even SnF your thread for scientific
content.

Are there more specific findings of dinosaurs to birds? For intance,
would it be only reptile dinosaurs that evolved this way? Or would it
be only the mammalian dinos or perhaps both?

I believe the primary dinosaurs that seemed to evolve towards birds are the two legged ones that held the most bird characteristics like the T-rex or the raptor (which are now believed to have had feathers on them). Though even the sauropods (Titanosaur and the like) had bird like features such as hollow bones and air sacs.

What are mammalian dinosaurs? I've never heard of any of those. Could you please link me to a source that shows them? I'm pretty sure that most dinosaurs are believed to have been warm-blooded as opposed to cold blooded, but I think the prevailing idea is that they are closer to reptiles than mammals.

The dinosaurs went extinct; how did ANYTHING evolve from them? Wouldn't the evolution process be halted the moment they went extinct? Dinosaurs stopped turning into birds that moment...

a reply to: Kromlech

That is an outdated model that doesn't explain enough. Obviously most of the big dinos died out with the asteroid impact, but smaller dinosaurs should have been able to survive the impact, especially ones that fed on carrion. Since all plant life wasn't eradicated either, small herbivores should have remained alive as well. The article suggests that these small dinosaurs used their flight like characteristics to slowly escape to the skies over the years as the mammals took over the ground.

a reply to: Kromlech

what moment are you referring to?

are you ready to consider that a "moment" is, in this case, over a million years? Its not like one day all the dinosaurs on the planet didn't wake up.

The "moment" all dinosaurs went extinct, most of the bipedal specimens had already either died off, or taken flight.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: Plugin

There are a few things that need to be addressed here. First, there were THREE distinct periods during the age of the dinosaurs (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods) with different dinosaurs in it. Also evolution continued to work and help create new dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic era. Though you are also correct about the explosion of new life after the KT event. That can be explained due to punctuated equilibrium where evolution tends to speed up to fill many niches when there is a void created of all the niches after a mass extinction event. Keep in mind though that even sped up by punctuated equilibrium, evolution still takes millions of years though.

I know but really between those three periods again no big change in evolution!
In all those hundreds of millions of years just slightly, which is just really strange. Myself don't belief it's hundreds of millions of years.. just think about that time length and how little changes, just something doesn't add up.

If you read again your article it seems evolution goes very fast in a short time! not hundreds of million of years.

a reply to: Plugin

I just explained the short bursts of evolution with the punctuated equilibrium comment. From the punctuated equilibrium link I posted in my first response to you:

Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and rapid (on a geologic time scale) events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.[1]

I dont belive this!
the bigest animals are now small birds?
Stupid.
dont they keep saying some big death killed them all?

a reply to: buddha

Besides this being a GROSS oversimplification of what I presented in the OP, what makes you think that if evolution can cause animals to grow bigger, they can't also grow smaller?

originally posted by: buddha
I dont belive this!
the bigest animals are now small birds?
Stupid.
dont they keep saying some big death killed them all?

A Krazyshot pointed out, its a massive over simplification to put it in those terms. Nobody is stating that so,ethimg the size of Argentinosaurus suddenly shrank and became birds. Much like humans share a common ancestor with the other great apes,today's birds share common ancestry with dinosaurs. There are a lot of factors involved in this process. One example would be Pygmy Mammoths who survived on the Channel Islands until about 4,000 years ago. T-Rex also had a. Much smaller relative that was exactly like the larger version just significantly smaller.

A far as the K-T mass extinction, it killed of all the large dinosaurs but not all dinosaurs, at least not immediately. There are many species today that are holdouts and survivors of the K-T extinction event such as crocodiles, alligators, sharks and the coelacanth to name a few.

One of the earliest birds was Archaeopteryx and is an extremely succinct example of transitional species showing the type of feathers and hollow bomes that are seen on today's birds that are crucial for flying and likewise sharing many features with smaller feathered dinosaurs that preceded it. While it shares an ancestral history with larger dinosaurs such as T-Rex, Archaeopteryx itself was not a direct descendant of those larger animals.

originally posted by: the owlbear
I wonder if they tasted like chicken...
Kentucky Fried T-Rex.

Alligator does...... Yum.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

"Once the whole body plan finally came together, then something was unlocked and they started evolving really fast," says paleontologist Stephen Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, lead author on the study.

That's it in a nutshell, I guess. "Something was unlocked"? I haven't read his study yet, but I hope he delves into this "something" a bit deeper. Would anyone who has read the study care to take a poke at what he means by that?

New Evidence Shows Duck-like Birds Lived at Same Time as Dinosaurs

www.icr.org...

In his Scientific American article, Dr. Dyke recounted some startling discoveries of duck-like remains in Cretaceous rocks, which are typified by dinosaur fossils. But like the grass bits found in fossilized dinosaur dung in 2005, which appeared "much earlier than had been thought on the basis of fossils,"11 the discovery of ducks in the same kinds of rock layers as duckbill dinosaurs is another example of man-made evolutionary timelines being confounded by the data.

youtube: Dinosaurs and Humans Co-existing? You Decide.
www.youtube.com...

a reply to: PhotonEffect

Title: “The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection OR The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”


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Huxley's grandfather was a major supporter of Darwin…

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12 min

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youtube: The Case For A Creator With Lee Strobel
www.youtube.com...

yt: Latest Scientific Evidence for God's Existence - Hugh Ross, PhD
youtu.be...

originally posted by: Verum1quaere
New Evidence Shows Duck-like Birds Lived at Same Time as Dinosaurs

www.icr.org...

From that page:

"Even so, the written accounts in Genesis should hold a prominent place for those who study earth's ancient past. These accounts clearly show that grass, dinosaurs, and birds co-existed--just as the fossil record demonstrates."

*facepalm*

a reply to: Verum1quaere

Do you have anything of your own to contribute or are you going to spend all your to e quote mining as I've seen many other threads? It would be a much better contribution if you shared your own thoughts instead of filling up space with quotes, which in many cases are taken entirely out of context.

a reply to: peter vlar

Oh, let him have his quotes. If someone has nothing new to say, they may as well say it in the same of words that was used before.

You encourage these people by engaging them, Peter. Leave them alone, and they will go away.

a reply to: Astyanax

You're right. It's like feeding wild animals. Once you start they keep coming back for more.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: Kromlech

what moment are you referring to?

are you ready to consider that a "moment" is, in this case, over a million years? Its not like one day all the dinosaurs on the planet didn't wake up.

The "moment" all dinosaurs went extinct, most of the bipedal specimens had already either died off, or taken flight.

...Oh cool, so an asteroid DIDN'T kill all the dinosaurs? It took "a million years later" for that asteroid to kill them all off? Huh ?

originally posted by: Kromlech
...Oh cool, so an asteroid DIDN'T kill all the dinosaurs? It took "a million years later" for that asteroid to kill them all off? Huh ?

*sigh*

In what way, shape or form could an asteroid have wiped out every single dinosaur in a single moment? And without wiping out every other form of biological life on the planet?

Of course the asteroid didn't kill all the dinosaurs. Sure, anything under it was done for, but the asteroid isn't what killed them. The asteroid was the catalyst for a series of changes in the global environment, changes which most dinosaurs were unable to survive in. When the asteroid hit the Earth, it threw millions of tons of crap into the atmosphere, which led to a global cooling, restricted the amount of sunlight which reached the surface and lent a heft dollop of pollution to the air. While this all happened, volcanic activity increased, also darkening the skies, cooling the planet etc etc.

Some dinosaurs wouldn't have been able to survive in this new environment. Nor would some plants.

Now, life has this thing you learn about when you're like 6 called a food pyramid. The things at the top, eat the things at the bottom. If even ONE thing is removed from the bottom, the effect can be devastating to species further up the hierarchy.
Dinosaurs, awesome as they are, were all specifically suited and highly adapted to the "role" they filled within their environments. I don't think any other "genus" of animal has expressed such a global and successful set of survival skills since. However, being so specifically adapted to their environments, it meant any significant change within that environment would have worked against them. One change could have devastated populations of dinosaurs.
Imagine what a change like, I dunno, the KT event could do.

In short, what I'm trying to say is this... I don't know where the belief that the asteroid struck the planet and magically wiped out every single dinosaur (land/sea/air) and for some reason spared mammals, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, arachnids, plants, fungi, molluscs, marsupials etc etc etc, came from. But it's overly simplistic, physically impossible, and scientifically unsound. Of course it took time for the dinos to go extinct.