The all new Velociraptor and why I laugh at 'science'

[Kirkland Laing]

Of course I don't think science claims dinosaurs descended from birds, I must have made a typo.

It is interesting however even here that the earliest full bird is considerd by some to be Protoavis, a debate rages as to whether its a bird or a dinobird.

If it is a full bird that would put the evolution of birds as earlier than the earliest therapod dinosaurs but that is a long way from generally agreed scientific opinon and not what I'm talking about here.

No, the generally accepted scienitific belief is that therapod dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, its no longer seriously questioned apart from an outspoken group led by Alan Fedducia as I said earlier.

So back on topic, are you saying that science DOESN'T claim that velociraptor now looks like that second turkey monster in my pic?

You wrote :

Actually to be more precise, it's the viw that science wants to convey it looked like in current books and literature to emphasise that they believe that therapod dinosaurs like velociraptor were the descendents of birds.

So being as precise as you could, yesterday, you were claiming that dinosaurs descended from birds.

But maybe it was just a precise typo. But then you did it again :

Erm every single scientist apart from Alan Fedducia who is the lone ornithologist voice against the therapod evolution of birds into dinosaurs.

Maybe it's just two typos and you really do know what you're talking about.


On what basis are you claiming that science has changed its opinion on what velociraptors looked like? On how they were portrayed in a Hollywood film?

Ah ok sorry I made two typos, well just checked my original posts and I have put it correctly there so no need to try and be a smart ass, it's pretty clear what I'm talking about.

Actually the way they are portrayed in a Hollywood film, i.e Jurassic Park is how they USED to be envisenged. Now they are no longer considered to look like that.

Have a look on Wikipedia to see what velociraptor is considered to look like now, they've even added wings.

National geographic also depict it with feathers now and speculate that it descended FROM a flying ancestor, so there a was bird type creature, that evolved into flightless, wingless therapod dinosaurs then back into birds again

Have a look at science daily's depiction of an early raptor dinosaur here if you think my pic was outlandish

Newly Discovered Birdlike Dinosaur Is Oldest Raptor Ever Found In South America


The kids pop up book I have was published by Dorling Kindersley one of the biggest reference book publishing companies in the world and the dinosaur pictures were also used in their adult reference books on dinosaurs

Follow this link

Dinosaurs - Dorling Kindersley

that bizarre creature on the cover of that book, that's Velociraptor now, 10 x weirder than the pic I found on the net.

This is the new reality, trying to promote the belief of dinosaur/bird evolution by turning velociraptor into a turkey monster.

They discovered a while ago that velociraptors had feathers from fossils, so now they're depicted as having feathers. Scientists actually suspected that they'd have feathers, finding the fossils confirmed it.

Children's popup books are generally not considered to be scientific evidence of anything. The people who design those books are making them interesting for kids and take artistic license with things to let them do that. If you have any evidence of academic studies altering dimensions of creatures not based on fossil records or other evidence i'd be interested to see it. I'm not going to take an artistic impression in a children's book seriously.

Meanwhile here's the best article I read that's been published on Darwin's bicentenary to give an overview of where the study of evolution stands today. It's very long and contains no pictures but it's full of facts and evidence. An excerpt :

The search for signs of natural selection in human beings has just begun. It will ultimately be as revelatory as Newton's description of the mathematics of motion 322 years ago, or the unlocking of the atom's secrets that began in the late 1800s.
The inundation of data since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, and the capacity to analyze it at the finest level of detail -- the individual DNA nucleotides that make up the molecule of heredity -- are giving us a look at humanity's autobiography in a way that was once unimaginable.
In small, discrete changes in our genes that have accumulated over time, we are seeing evolution's tracery, as durable as it is delicate. It is slowly revealing how climate, geography, disease, culture and chance sculpted Homo sapiens into the unique and diverse species it is today.
Biologists are discovering that the size of our limbs and brains, the enzymes in our spit and stomachs, the color of our skin, the contour of our hair, and the armament of our immune systems are each to some degree the products of evolutionary adaptation. They are the hard-earned, but unintended, bequests of our ancestors' struggle to survive.
This, of course, is no surprise. Darwin knew it was so -- and he'd never heard of a gene.
The surprise is our capacity to see the mechanical changes -- for genes are nothing more than little machines operating in water -- that are evolution's working material. Natural selection has moved beyond metaphor. We can see the thing itself.
"Why are we the way we are? That has always been a sort of fundamental question, hasn't it? But it is only now that we can really begin to address it," said Carlos D. Bustamante, a professor of computational biology at Cornell University. "Over the ages we catalogued the anatomical differences between people and eventually biochemical differences, too. Now we can get down to the molecular differences. We really mean it this time."





200 Years After Darwin's Birth, Scientists Are Decoding the History of Human Evolution - washingtonpost.com