RSR: Now Biological Material from Archaeopteryx
* Archaeopteryx, Bison, Pelican, Chimp, & Cancer: Fred Williams engineer and webmaster for the Creation Research Society, and Bob Enyart, on this episode of Real Science Radio draw from the latest peer-reviewed science journal article on original biological material and from Creation magazine, April - June 2011.
* July 2011 Update from Nature: Not Transitional: It's official. Archaeopteryx is no longer considered a transitional creature from dinosaurs to modern birds. Nature News & Views admits that this "icon" of evolution has been "knocked from its perch" after leading palaeontologists reassessed "the creature that has been considered the evolutionary link between the two." Also, Nature News reported that Archaeopteryx had been "the ideal 'missing link' with which to demonstrate evolution from non-avian dinosaurs to [modern] birds." Why the reassessment? A paper in the journal Nature reports a result that "challenges the centrality of Archaeopteryx in the transition to birds" and that "shifts Archaeopteryx" out of the modern bird lineage. In the popuar press, Wired admits, "Archaeopteryx‘s status as the forerunner of modern birds is crumbling" and in the science press, Discover News laments that, "Archaeopteryx [is] likely removed from the bird family tree". Demonstrating the adage that evidence for evolution devolves over time, along with "vestigial" organs, Nebraska Man, and our "backwardly" wired retina, after 150 years of being the transitional trump card, Archaeopteryx is out (except for the typical 100-year lag in the published scientific discoveries and the outdated claims published in evolutionary textbooks). And as for the Chinese fossils that knocked Archaeopteryx off its perch, remember the late Larry Martin, University of Kansas paleontologist, whom CNN reported as cautioning, "You have to put this into perspective. To the people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur."
* More Dinosaur-Layer Biological Material Discovered: After previous discoveries of actual dinosaur soft tissue (T. rex, hadrosaur, triceratops, etc.), now The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that various types of original biological material in Archaeopteryx feathers and bones has allegedly survived for 150 million years. The New Scientist report, Soft tissue remnants discovered in Archaeopteryx, put it:
"It boasts more than just... impressions of long-gone feathers. One of the world's most famous fossils... Archaeopteryx – also contains remnants of the feathers' soft tissue. ... "It's amazing that that chemistry is preserved after 150 million years." ... palaeontologists had long thought that only impressions remained. [But] 'There is soft-tissue chemistry preserved in places that people didn't expect it,' says [geochemist Roy] Wogelius."
That link in this New Scientist article goes to a similar article with this title: Tyrannosaurus rex fossil gives up precious protein.