Astonishing 99-Million-Year-Old Bird Wings Found Preserved In Amber

Macro-evolution = micro-evolution + time.

As far as those who doubt the Theory of Evolution, please keep in mind that, like all science, the Theory of Evolution is falsifiable. Erego, anyone who wants to disprove it is free to conduct original research in an attempt to do so.

Simply go find a pre-cambrian hippo fossil, for example.

Othewise, any other theory offered in place of evolution will have to explain hundreds of thousands of physical observations in geology, biology, paleontology, and so forth. It must explain these things at least as well as evolution, and it must be at least as simple a mechanism.

Not an easy feat. But you are welcome to it.

We await your published findings in a mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journal.

a reply to: TerryDon79

Imagine a world without primitive birds stupid enough to build their nests under that heavy of a sap flow.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: TerryDon79

Imagine a world without primitive birds stupid enough to build their nests under that heavy of a sap flow.

We could even imagine a world where modern humans read the source material where they would learn that it's highly unlikely that this is the result of a nest being built beneath heavy sap flow and instead an accident resulting from juveniles exploring the world around them

The wings had sharp little claws, allowing the juvenile birds to clamber about in the trees.

These birds did not hang about in the nest waiting to be fed, but set off looking for food, and sadly died perhaps because of their small size and lack of experience. "Isolated feathers in other amber samples show that adult birds might have avoided the sticky sap, or pulled themselves free."

a reply to: muzzleflash

I didn't create a strawman, you mentioned a theory that didn't exist and I corrected it. A few posts later you said that macro evolution is still a hypothesis, which was also not true. I have not personally insulted you once in this thread, yet you have called me a jerk, snobbish, lazy, etc. I will try to explain in more detail this time, because your argument WAS addressed, I just don't think you realized it. I tried to keep it simple because I've heard that micro/macro thing so many times, it's tiresome.

My curiosity wonders why such ancient creatures did not hardly evolve at all (if even at all) for hundreds of millions of years while all these others supposedly evolved rapidly in comparison by ridiculous bounds.

This is the statement from your first post that made me think that you didn't really understand evolution, I wasn't trying to be a dick. There is no set rule of evolution that determines how fast or slow an organism evolves. They follow the environment, and nothing is guaranteed, not even complexity. It took life something like 2 billion years just to go from single celled organisms to multi cellular life. Plenty of single celled organisms were fine in their niche, and many still exist today.

Separating micro and macro evolution is the only straw man I've seen in this thread. If you just made a simple mistake and just called it the wrong name, then I apologize, it sounded like you were making a completely different argument. The whole, "You can prove micro evolution, but can't prove macro" is just so old, redundant and long debunked at this point, I apologize if that wasn't your position. It sure sounded like it, especially when you say:

I claimed (by inference) I doubted that accumulated mutations could randomly amount to complete viable species morphing as it seems so improbable and there are dozens of major problems with that proposition.

Can you list the dozen major problems with the proposition? Just because it seems improbable to you, does not make it so. Evolution is not just random mutations either. Natural selection plays a big role, which is why beneficial mutations stick and the detrimental ones are phased out. It's also why there is no set rate to it.

4) Attacked my character for no reason other than to shame me for doubting evolution.

Where did I attack your character? I attacked a false assertion in your argument. You have now attacked my character, and your doubts about evolution are off topic. This thread is about a preserved wing from the dinosaur era, not the validity of evolution. Was typing out that whole list really necessary?

I find it improbable that an animal would go from not having wings to suddenly having wings and being able to fly.

This is the exact issue I brought up in the previous post. There was nothing sudden about having wings. They didn't just sprout over night. You have to look at the evolution of the wing and think about the incremental beneficial changes that led to the emergence. It's not like a wingless creature just gives birth to a creature with wings. They started out as limbs with quills for protection, eventually the quills became feathers, which was beneficial to the smaller dinosaurs that could glide or use it for camouflage. You say the mutations were non useful, but they actually were.

If adaptation is for survivalist reasons, how did the dna "know" to keep slowly randomly mutating towards this "goal of a wing" thousands of years down the line? It can't "know", it had to be pure random coincidences that by luck, became wings.

DNA does not know to mutate. Mutations are caused by radiation, errors in copying and other environmental factors. DNA does not mutate toward any goal. This is related to your misunderstanding above. Mutations happen every time an organism is conceived (dozens to hundreds of changes to the genome of the organism). When this happens, the mutations are either beneficial, detrimental or neutral. Truth be told, most mutations are neutral. If an intermediate incremental change while developing a wing was detrimental, the organism dies so that "bad" mutation dies off and doesn't reproduce, so it is gone from the genetic line. It will only be the beneficial or neutral mutations that carry on.

Also, it's not linear. Sometimes, a certain trait could be beneficial to an organism for millions of years, then a sudden environmental change will cause it to be a detriment. When that happens, then the population either migrates, adapts or dies out. Evolutionary "fitness" is a relative and temporary thing when looking at the big picture. This is how populations split up and diverge in different directions. Sometimes you even have the environment change again down the road, to where the older mutations are beneficial again, which perfectly explains your Lazarus problem. You can't look at evolution as just the random mutations. Natural selection seems to be largely ignored in your posts.

If the Lazarus specimens were so survivable why need to adapt into these creatures claimed to derive from them?

Environmental changes, as I referred to above.

Your post about the eyes, is the same exact misunderstanding from above. The incremental changes are not sudden, and are indeed beneficial. Evolution of the eye is one of the easier ones. The first mutation is photo sensitive cells (detect light, which is beneficial for any organism in an environment that isn't pitch black. The next mutation is the slightly concave photo sensitive cells. This is beneficial to tell the angle in which the light is coming. A layer forms over the concave cells. The benefit of this is that it protects the cells from damage. I'd love to explain the entire thing to you, but you can easily find a google image of it by searching for evolution of the eye. There are very good explanations for it that show how the incremental changes can happen as well as be beneficial each time based on the many different types of eyes out there in the animal kingdom.

Sorry about the long post, hopefully you understand evolution a little bit better now.

a reply to: peter vlar

OR a world where people on the Internet develop learn to distinguish a fairly obvious (I thought) joke.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: TerryDon79

Imagine a world without primitive birds stupid enough to build their nests under that heavy of a sap flow.

The juvenile may have been dead from predation or disease, you know. That's a more likely scenario.

a reply to: pfishy

Nothing like a little egg on my face to start the day off right! Apparently I need to change the batteries in my sarcasm detector or perhaps develop a sense of humor! Sorry about that.