Talk:Archaeopteryx

Amongst pro-evolution scientists Feduccia's research is considered to be completely disproven. Referencing his research without mentioning the dozens of papers that refute it makes the conservapedia appear biased and/or out of date. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by token (talk)

Italics

Folks, please. No matter what your view, it's proper scientific style to use italics. Sterile 22:21, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Removed paragraph

I've removed the following paragraph because I question it's accuracy:

More recently, CT scans of an Archaeopteryx braincase were compared to the brains of modern and more advanced fossil birds. It was demonstrated that the brain of Archaeopteryx is not like modern birds. Instead, the authors concluded that like its ankle, feet, and skull, the brain or Archaeopteryx is more like predatory dinosaurs than modern birds.

It referenced a paper that is not available freely on-line (it needs to be purchased), but the on-line abstract[1] says the following:

Fossils preserving traces of soft anatomy are rare in the fossil record; even rarer is evidence bearing on the size and shape of sense organs that provide us with insights into mode of life. Here, we describe unique fossil preservation of an avian brain from the Volgograd region of European Russia. The brain of this Melovatka bird is similar in shape and morphology to those of known fossil ornithurines (the lineage that includes living birds), such as the marine diving birds Hesperornis and Enaliornis, but documents a new stage in avian sensory evolution: acute nocturnal vision coupled with well-developed hearing and smell, developed by the Late Cretaceous (ca 90Myr ago). This fossil also provides insights into previous ‘bird-like’ brain reconstructions for the most basal avian Archaeopteryx—reduction of olfactory lobes (sense of smell) and enlargement of the hindbrain (cerebellum) occurred subsequent to Archaeopteryx in avian evolution, closer to the ornithurine lineage that comprises living birds. The Melovatka bird also suggests that brain enlargement in early avians was not correlated with the evolution of powered flight.

That suggests to me that, contrary to the paragraph removed from the article, CT scans were done of a different bird, not of Archaeopteryx.

If someone has access to the full paper and can confirm that the paragraph is accurate, it can go back in.

Philip J. Rayment 05:47, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

The brain of Archaeopteryx had already been CT scanned, see here:http://www.utexas.edu/opa/pubs/oncampus/02oc_issues/oc020702/oc_brain.html. Archaeopteryxs brain was not like modern birds, so it was harder to interpret; the new paper scanned an intermediate bird's fossil skull, which greatly helped paleontologists understand the orginal CT scan of Archaeopteryxs brain. It was not like that of modern birds, it is more like a Velociraptor or oviraptorid in organization.

If you are going to remove actual peer-reviewd data because "it requires payment" (I don't like it either, but they have to make money somehow) while keeping easily-refuted information that has never made it to a scientific journal in your entries then you are making the conservapedia into a joke.