Toothless birds: Deprogramming from Darwinism

We are informed in this New Scientist article that "Early birds may have dropped teeth to get airborne." (Colin Barras, 08 December 2009)

If true, it would be no surprise. It's the same reason airports impose luggage weight restrictions on passengers. Not clear why this is even a story. Apparently, four extinct groups of birds all lost their teeth independently.

That theory is "as good as any other", says Mike Benton at the University of Bristol, UK, though he remains sceptical. "Losing teeth wouldn't make a huge difference to balance in the air."

Essentially, the big problem for birds isn't losing their teeth, it is replacing them. The birds needed a whole digestive system that substitutes small stones and grit, swallowed into the "crop", and the behaviour pattern of seeking them out and swallowing them.

I wonder how all that would happen by a multitude of slow Darwinian steps before they starved to death?

There's got to be more to this. Why did all four known groups lose their teeth without exception? (Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0885)

(Note: ) It's coffee time. Cartoon birds do have teeth. Here are some images. It's interesting that, when making a bird think and talk like a human, the cartoonist cannot resist adding teeth.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Darwinism and pop culture: Birds are really dinosaurs! now doubted

According to Science Daily,

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed."

I'm kind of disappointed, because I had always hoped that birds were descended from dinosaurs. It would mean that they never really died out. But they did. And it has become permissible to say so.

The fun part is that - if this finding holds up - all the dinobird nonsense fronted by pop science mags as The Latest Truth is fishwrap. And Feduccia, long a sort of "denialist" in the fishwraps for doubting the popular legend, is vindicated.

I always say that - outside of mathematics - a proposition that can't be denied can't be believed either.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Birds: What you thought you knew about their evolution is ... wrong?

From both Science Daily and New Scientist comes the word that, in the words of New Scientist's Bob Holmes (June 26, 2008),

A new study – the largest analysis of birds to date using modern genetic methods – has turned up numerous surprising relationships that will force biologists to reevaluate much of what they thought they knew about avian evolution.

[ ... ]

This new tree contains several notable surprises. For example, falcons are more closely related to songbirds than to other hawks and eagles. The closest kin of the diving birds called grebes turn out to be flamingos. And tiny, flashy hummingbirds, according to the new tree, are just a specialised form of nighthawks, whose squat, bulky bodies make them an unlikely cousin.

and in the words of Science Daily, whose drudges toil nameless (June 27, 2008):

The results of the study are so broad that the scientific names of dozens of birds will have to be changed, and biology textbooks and birdwatchers' field guides will have to be revised. For example, we now know that:

Birds adapted to the diverse environments several distinct times because many birds that now live on water (such as flamingos, tropicbirds and grebes) did not evolve from a different waterbird group, and many birds that now live on land (such as turacos, doves, sandgrouse and cuckoos) did not evolve from a different landbird group.

Similarly, distinctive lifestyles (such as nocturnal, raptorial and pelagic, i.e., living on the ocean or open seas) evolved several times. For example, contrary to conventional thinking, colorful, daytime hummingbirds evolved from drab nocturnal nightjars; falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles; and tropicbirds (white, swift-flying ocean birds) are not closely related to pelicans and other waterbirds.

Shorebirds are not a basal evolutionary group, which refutes the widely held view that shorebirds gave rise to all modern birds.

And, summing it up,

"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, another lead author and Bucksbaum Postdoctoral Fellow at The Field Museum. "First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."

Yeah. Wrong.

Or maybe not. This analysis depends on certain assumptions about bird genomes - and the assumptions may not be correct.

Here is what we now know for sure: No one living has any sure idea how different types of birds originated. Fanatics of one method clash with the fanatics of another.

And people wonder why there is an intelligent design controversy ...