The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his069/icr0989.lzh/ICR0989.TXT

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ICR:No. 198 AS A TRANSITIONAL FORM ARCHAEOPTERYX WON'T FLY by Duane T. Gish, Ph.D.*

   There is a growing consensus that Archaeopteryx, a bird whose
fossils have been found in the Solnhofen Plattenkalk of Franconia (West
Germany), was indeed capable of flight. The claim, however, that
Archaeopteryx was a transitional form between reptiles and birds simply
won't fly.

   Recent fossil discoveries and recent research on Archaeopteryx argue
strongly against the suggestion that it is transitional between
reptiles and birds. The rocks in which fossils of Archaeopteryx have
been found are designated Upper Jurassic, and thus are dated at about
150 million years on the standard evolutionary geological time scale.
Ninety years ago, with reference to Archaeopteryx and to two other
ancient birds, Ichthyornis and Hesperornis, Beddard declared, "So
emphatically were all these creatures birds that the actual origin of
Aves is barely hinted at in the structure of these remarkable
remains."(1) During the years since publication of Beddard's book, no
better candidate as an intermediate between reptiles and birds has
appeared, and so, in the eyes of its beholders, Archaeopteryx has
become more and more reptile-like until it is now fashionable to
declare that Archaeopteryx was hardly more than a feathered reptile. In
90 years, Archaeopteryx has thus evolved from a creature so
emphatically bird-like its reptilian ancestry was barely hinted at,
into a creature some evolutionists declare to be nothing more than a
reptile with feathers!

   What is the true status of Archaeopteryx? Was it a transitional form
between reptiles and birds? First, the general nature of the evidence:
The sudden appearance, fully formed, of all the complex invertabrates
(snails, clams, jellyfish, sponges, worms, sea urchins, brachiopods,
trilobites, etc.) without a trace of ancestors, and the sudden
appearance, fully formed, of every major kind of fish (supposedly the
first vertebrates)

   without a trace of ancestors, proves beyond reasonable doubt that
evolution has not occurred. Quarrels about disputable cases such as
Archaeopteryx are really pointless. Furthermore, there are three other
basically different types of flying creatures--flying insects, flying
reptiles (now extinct), and flying mammals (bats). It would be strange,
indeed even incomprehensible, that millions of years of evolution of
these three basically different types of flying creatures, each
involving the remarkable transition of a land animal into a flying
animal, would have failed to produce large numbers of transitional
forms. If all of that evolution has occurred, our museums should
contain scores, if not hundreds or thousands, of fossils of
intermediate forms in each case. However, not a trace of an ancestor or
transitional form has ever been found for any of these creatures!

   Archaeopteryx had an impressive array of features that immediately
identify it as a bird, whatever else may be said about it. It had
perching feet. Several of its fossils bear the impression of feathers.
These feathers were identical to those of modern birds in every
respect. The primary feathers of non-flying birds are distinctly
different from those of flying birds. Archaeopteryx had the feathers of
flying birds,(2) had the basic pattern and proportions of the avian
wing, and an especially robust furcula (wishbone). Furthermore, there
was nothing in the anatomy of Archaeopteryx that would have prevented
it being a powered flyer.(3) No doubt Archaeopteryx was a feathered
creature that flew. It was a bird!

   It has been asserted that Archaeopteryx shares 21 specialized
characters with coelurosaurian dinosaurs.(4) Research on various
anatomical features of Archaeopteryx in the last ten years or so,
however, has shown, in every case, that the characteristic in question
is bird-like, not reptile-like. When the cranium of the London specimen
was removed from the limestone and studied, it was shown to be
bird-like, not reptile-like.(5) Benton has stated that "details of the
brain case and associated bones at the back of the skull seem to
suggest that Archaeopteryx is not the ancestral bird, but an offshoot
from the early avian stem."(6) In this same paper, Benton states that
the quadrate (the bone in the jaw that articulates with the squamosal
of the skull) in Archaeopteryx was single-headed as in reptiles. Using
a newly devised technique, computed tomography, Haubitz, et al,
established that the quadrate of the Eichstatt specimen of
Archaeopteryx was double-headed and thus similar to the condition of
modern birds,(7) rather than single-headed, as stated by Benton.

   L.D. Martin and co-workers have established that neither the teeth
nor the ankle of Archaeopteryx could have been derived from theropod
dinosaurs─the teeth being those typical of other (presumably later)
toothed birds, and the ankle bones showing no homology with those of
dinosaurs.(8) John Ostrom, a strong advocate of a dinosaurian ancestry
for birds, had claimed that the pubis of Archaeopteryx pointed
downward─an intermediate position between that of coelurosaurian
dinosaurs, which points forward, and that of birds, which points
backward. A.D. Walker, in more recent studies, asserts that Ostrom's
interpretation is wrong, and that the pubis of Archaeopteryx was
oriented in a bird-like position.(9) Further, Tarsitano and Hecht
criticize various aspects of Ostrom's hypothesis of a dinosaurian
origin of birds, arguing that Ostrom had misinterpreted the homologies
of the limbs of Archaeopteryx and theropod dinosaurs.(10)

   A.D. Walker has presented an analysis of the ear region of
Archaeopteryx that shows, contrary to previous studies, that this
region is very similar to the otic region of modern birds.(11) J.R.
Hinchliffe, utilizing modern isotopic techniques on chick embryos,
claims to have established that the "hand" of birds consists of digits
II, III and IV, while the digits of the "hand" of theropod dinosaurs
consist of digits I, II, and III.

   Scales are flat horny plates; feathers are very complex in structure
consisting of a central shaft from which radiate barbs and barbules.
Barbules are equipped with tiny hooks which lock onto the barbs and
bind the feather surface into a flat, strong, flexible vane. Feathers
and scales arise from different layers of the skin. Furthermore, the
development of a feather is extremely complex, and fundamentally
different from that of a scale. Feathers, as do hairs, but unlike
scales, develop from follicles. A hair, however, is a much simpler
structure than a feather. The developing feather is protected by a
horny sheath, and forms around a bloody, conical, inductive dermal
core. Not only is the developing feather sandwiched between the sheath
and dermal core, it is complex in structure. Development of the cells
that will become the mature feather involves complex processes. Cells
migrate and split apart in highly specific patterns to form the complex
arrangement of barbs and barbules.(12)

   Philip Regal attempts to imagine how feathers may have developed
from scales.(13) Regal presents a series of hypothetical events whereby
the elongation of body scales on reptiles, as an adaptive response to
excessive solar heat, eventually produced feathers. What we are left to
believe is that a series of genetic mistakes, or mutations, just
happened somehow to result in a sequence of incredible events that not
only converted a simple horny plate into the tremendously complex and
marvelously engineered structure of a feather, but completely
reorganized the simple method of development of a scale into the highly
complex process necessary to produce a feather. What an incredible
faith in the blind forces of evolution! Regal's paper simply adds
another "Just-so" story to evolutionary scenarios, completely devoid of
empirical support.

   Recent events cast even further doubt on Archaeopteryx as a
transitional form. If the claims of Sankar Chatterjee prove to be
valid, then certainly Archaeopteryx could not be the ancestral bird,
and dinosaurs could not be ancestral to birds. Chatterjee and his co-
workers at Texas Tech University claim to have found two crow-sized
fossils of a bird near Post, Texas, in rocks supposedly 225 million
years old─thus allegedly 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx and
as old as the first dinosaurs. Totally contrary to what evolutionists
would expect for such a fossil bird however, Chatterjee claims that his
bird is even more bird-like than Archaeopteryx! In contrast to
Archaeopteryx, this bird had a keel-like breastbone and hollow bones.
In most other respects, it was similar to Archaeopteryx.(14) If
evolutionary assumptions are correct, this bird should have been much
more reptile-like than Archaeopteryx. In fact, he shouldn't even exist!

   Another threat to the notion that Archaeopteryx was intermediate
between reptiles and birds are the claims of Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous
British astronomer, fellow astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe, and
Israeli scientist Lee Spetner, based on detailed photographic evidence,
that Archaeopteryx is a fraud.15,16 They maintain that an artificial
matrix was placed on a reptilian fossil and that modern feathers were
used to impress the matrix, to leave a likeness of fossil feathers.
Scientists of the British Museum of Natural History have defended the
authenticity of the fossil.(17) If the allegations of Hoyle,
Wickramasinghe, and Spetner turn out to be correct, it would be a
devastating blow to evolutionists. If the fossil is a forgery, however,
it would have to be a devilishly clever one, because the forger would
not only have to fake the feathers, but also somehow emplace the many
bird-like features described in this article.

   The conclusion which appears to be most reasonable is that
Archaeopteryx was a true bird, remarkably isolated from any alleged
reptilian progenitor and other birds. A discussion of other features of
Archaeopteryx, such as its teeth and clawed wings, may be found in
Euolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record.(18)

   * Dr. Gish is Vice-President of the Institute for Creation Research.

   References

   1. F.E. Beddard, The Structure and Classification of Birds,
Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1898, p. 160. 2. Alan Feduccia and H.B
Tordoft, Science 203:1020(1979). 3. S.L. Olson and Alan Feduccia,
Nature 278:247(1979). 4. A.J. Charig, A New Look at Dinosaurs,
Heinemann, London, 1979, p. 139. 5. K.N. Whetstone, Journal of
Vertebrate Paleontology [2(4):439(1983)]. 6. M.J. Benton, Nature
305:99(1983). 7. B. Haubitz, M. Prokop, W. Dohnng, J.H. Ostrom, and P.
Wellnhofer, Paleobiology 14(2):206 (1988). 8. L.D. Martin, J.D.
Stewart, and K.N. Whetstone, The Auk 97:86 (1980). 9. A.D. Walker,
Geological Magazine 117:595 (1980). 10. S. Tarsitano and M.K. Hecht,
Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society 69:149 (1980). 11. A.D.
Walker, as described in Peter Dodson, "International Archaeopteryx
Conference," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 5(2):177, June 1985.
12. A.M. Lucas and P.R. Slettenhein, Auian Anatomy: Integument. [J.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1972. 13. P.J. Regal, The
Quarterly Review of Biology 50:35 (1975). 14. S. Weisburd, Science
News, August 16, 1986, p. 103; Tim Beardsley, Nature 322:677 (1986).
15. Gail Vines, New Scientist, 14 March 1985, p. 3; Ted Nield, New
Scientist, 1 August 1985, P. 49 16. Fred Hoyle and Chandra
Wickramasinghe, Archaeopteryx: The Primordial Bird A Case oJ Fossil
Forgery, Christopher Davies Publishers, Swansea, 1986. 17. A.J. Charig,
F. Greenaway, A.C. Milner, C.A. Walker, and P.J. Whybrow, Science
232:622(1986). 18. D.T. Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil
Record, Creation-Life Publishers, El Cajon, CA, 1985.