Here is a CNN article at:
http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9906/16/oldest.beaked.bird.ap/index.html
about the earliest fossil bird with a beak.
I found the following comment amusing in light of Berra's claim that: "the
Corvette evolved through a selection process acting on variations...A
similar process shapes the evolution of organisms." (Berra T.M.,
"Evolution and the Myth of Creationism," 1990, pp118-119):
"What you've got is a modern car engine hood on the rear end of a Model
T," said Larry D. Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the
University of Kansas' Museum of Natural History."
Now all Berra has to do is ask Ford to graft a 1999 front end on to a 1919
Model T and he will have a more realistic example for his book!
The fact is that in the fossil record, improvements did not occur in a
Darwinian, stepwise fashion, but each new feature usually appeared suddently,
fully formed, while the rest of the organism stayed the same.
This so-called "mosaic evolution" is yet another difficulty of Darwinism,
which expected that natural selection would be continually working on the
*whole* organism, as Darwin evisaged:
"It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly
scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those
that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and
insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the
improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic
conditions of life." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species," 6th Edition,
1928, reprint, p84)
Wilcox lists this as one of the lines of "evidence [which] throws doubt on
the adequacy of neo-Darwinism as a creative source of new morphology":
"But the fossil record shows an unevenness of rate suggesting coherencies,
and that evidence throws doubt on the adequacy of neo-Darwinism as a
creative source of new morphology...I note the following problem
areas...Mosaic evolution at morphogenic transitions. Intermediate
evidence, when it does exist, usually is mosaic in nature. Mosaic evolution
(the movement of one character with stasis in another) indicates the
constraints of existing genomic diversity. But, if the characteristic
appearance of new suites of characters is similar to that seen in
Archeopteryx, then an almost completely established (individuated)
character set can be obtained for one organ/structure (flight feathers) with
little movement in others skeletal characteristics) (Wellnhofer, 1990;
Sereno and Chenggang, 1992). This makes sense only if the complexity to
be realized was already available in the genome. If large-scale
morphological change depends on the appearance of a series of new
mutations to be selected by a new adaptive niche, should not characters be
mutated and move together at rates that are at least comparable?" (Wilcox
D.L. "A Blindfolded Watchmaker: The Arrival of the Fittest", in Buell J. &
Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?", 1994, pp202-203.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/fte/darwinism/chapter13.html)
Steve
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Fossil of oldest beaked bird discovered
June 16, 1999 Web posted at: 9:46 p.m. EDT (0146 GMT)
(AP) -- Paleontologists have found a fossil of the oldest known bird species
with a beak -- an upturned bill resembling Woody Woodpecker's.
The 130 million-year-old, crow-sized Confuciusornis dui was discovered
last year in ancient lake sediment in China, so exquisitely preserved that
impressions of its feathers are clearly visible.
Previously, the earliest known toothless, beaked bird dated from about 70
million years ago.
The skull of the Confuciusornis dui fascinated -- and amused -- scientists.
The beak resembles that of classic cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.
The creature's beak was an advanced trait for its time, coming only 10
million to 15 million years after the first known bird -- the toothy, reptile-
like Archaeopteryx -- during the Jurassic Period. The Archaeopteryx had a
reptilian snout rather than a beak of horn-like material.
The back end of the Confuciusornis dui's skull is primitive, with two
openings behind the eyes that are a throwback to dinosaurs.
"What you've got is a modern car engine hood on the rear end of a Model
T," said Larry D. Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the
University of Kansas' Museum of Natural History. He helped analyze the
fossil.
This combination of primitive and advanced traits suggests that early bird
evolution was more complex than previously thought and included many
species that didn't succeed.
"This is showing a diversity we didn't know about before. It's not like you
have this sort of straight-line evolution from one to another and each one
getting more specialized," said Storrs L. Olson, curator of birds at the
National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.
Sankar Chatterjee, a professor of geology at Texas Tech University in
Lubbock, agreed: "The story is much more complex. Evolution is not really
like a ladder. It's more like a bush."
The bird is described in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. It was
analyzed by American scientists and a team from the Chinese Academy of
Sciences.
Scientists believe the bird flew well and took off by scaling trees and
jumping.
Confuciusornis (kahn-FYOO-shus-OR-nis) dui is the smallest species
found to date of the order named for the Chinese philosopher. The birds
became extinct 120 million years ago and probably didn't lead to modern
birds.
Hundreds of specimens of a larger species of Confuciusornis have also
been found at the site, but all lacked intact skulls. Researchers believe the
birds fell victim to volcanic eruptions that preserved their remains.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
[...]
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"The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for
many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they
regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably the reason why
severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology
has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation." (Conklin
E.G., "Man Real and Ideal," Scribner, 1943, p147, in Macbeth N., "Darwin
Retried: An Appeal to Reason," Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, pp126-127)
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