Science changing its mind on dinosaurs again
By Dana Blankenhorn
<http://www.smartplanet.com/search/?q=Dana+Blankenhorn>| Feb 10, 2010
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Comments<http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/science-changing-its-mind-on-dinosaurs-again/3023/#comments>
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<http://i.bnet.com/blogs/bird-skeleton.jpg>One of the most frustrating
parts of science for non-scientists to grasp is that scientists change their
minds.
Gravity is just a theory. Evolution is just a theory. Yet K-12 students are
given both as “facts,” which leads some parents to scratch their protruding
foreheads and conclude science doesn’t know anything and thus religion
should replace it.
One of the most popular examples of science “changing its mind” came over
the last generation, with a growing realization that dinosaurs and birds
have a lot in common.
Thus the chicken on your plate must be related to Tyrannosaurus Rex, just as
you are related to the monkey.
Now that theory is being
replaced<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100209183335.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher>.
A growing body of evidence indicates birds and dinosaurs had a common
ancestor, but that their evolution diverged. Raptors may be a bird-like
descendant of a different genealogical family from dinosaurs.
A lot of this work is coming from John
Ruben<http://people.oregonstate.edu/%7Erubenj/index.htm>,
a zoologist at Oregon State University. (Go Beavers.)
One of Ruben’s key findings involves a bird’s
thigh<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm>(above,
from
ScienceDaily <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm>),
which is fixed in place and allows it the lung capacity to fly. Like people,
dinosaurs had a thigh bone that moved as it crossed the ground. In other
words birds run from their knees, dinosaurs ran from their hips.
You can taste this evolution in action. Try cooking a duck, a bird that
flies. Notice how the breast is dark meat, and the thigh is tucked right
into it? Now cook a chicken, a bird that mainly glides and runs. The breast
is light, the thigh easier to separate at the hip and darker, because it
gets more use.
This does not mean that bird-like dinosaurs such as the feathered Anchiornis
huxleyi <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928205415.htm>found
last year in China, are unrelated to modern birds. But it could have
been a transitional creature on a separate, but related evolutionary path.
Feathers may have evolved twice.
Yes, it’s complicated.
*Ruben’s theories raise many more questions than they answer. That’s the
point. *
Science is not, and never really has been, about answers. If you want
answers talk to an engineer. Science is about questions. The best theories
ask the best questions, leading us to new avenues of discovery.
What Ruben has shown us, once again, is not just that science can change its
mind, but that science and religion are fundamentally different and should
never be confused even though, as is the case of birds and dinosaurs,
confusion may seem the easier way to go.
--
Celebrating 10 years of bringing diversity to perversity!
Mahogany at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahogany_pleasures_of_darkness/
