Feathered Dinosaurs: That Didn't Last Very Long

Have you ever met someone who is impulsive? I suppose we all have impulsive tendencies about some things. Some guys have a different girl friend every time I see them. Others are driving a new car every time I talk to them. A friend of mine got a new, black 2007 Mustang, a lightly driven, black Hummer H2, and a new black 2008 Mustang in about 5 months. (I just wanted to draw out how consistent he was in his love of the color black).

But paleontologists have, once again, tweaked...er...altered...er...swapped out their theory on the whole feathered dinosaur issue. In a recent article from the National Geographic Online (the only one I read consistently when time is tight), paleontologists have unearthed a dinosaur whose skin was fossilized intact. They even believe that they can make out teeth marks in the skin of this "130 million year old" dinosaur named Psittacosaurus (last name not provided).

Now normally a grand dino showing a little skin wouldn't excite even evolution-espousing paleontologists all that much, but this one tends to refute the recently acquired, but deeply-held belief that dinosaurs had feathers (especially around 130 million years ago!)

So what's the big deal? Scientists swap out the pillars of their evolutionary faith about as often as Hollywood actors adopt African children against their parents' will. But this time is a little different. The article entitled "Amazing" Dino Fossil Found With Skin, Tissue in China states that:

The research also suggests that some dinosaurs had thick, scaly skin like that of modern-day reptiles, refuting the theory that dinos had primitive feathers.

So dinos didn't have feathers, big deal. But this discussion impacts more than simply whether dinosaurs carried combs or sunscreen. The whole point of gluing feathers to dinosaurs was to account for the rise of modern birds!

This new discovery effectively orphans all birds everywhere as surely as being adopted by Madonna or Tom Cruise orphans an African child!! Help! Help! ...Man! There's never a PETA member around when you need one!

Upon the topic of dinobirds, wikipedia has this quote in one discussion of feathered dinosaurs:

“The presence of unambiguous feathers in an unambiguously nonavian theropod has the rhetorical impact of an atomic bomb, rendering any doubt about the theropod relationships of birds ludicrous.”[3]

However, not all scientists agreed that Caudipteryx was unambiguously non-avian, and some of them continued to doubt that general consensus. Paleontologists like Alan Feduccia, who opposes the theory that birds are theropods, sees Caudipteryx as a flightless bird unrelated to dinosaurs.[7] Jones et al. (2000) found that Caudipteryx was a bird based on a mathematical comparison of the body proportions of flightless birds and non-avian theropods. Dyke and Norell (2005) criticized this result for flaws in their mathematical methods, and produced results of their own which supported the opposite conclusion.

Setting aside my guilt about being "ludicrous", I guess my question is this: if the issue is still unsettled, then why did the I-Max here in Utah show a lengthy, multi-million dollar movie about how birds evolved from dinosaurs? The movie was targeted at young children and included cute scenes of affable, feathered dinosaurs hopping around the Barremian age. The advanced, computer graphics were stunning and convincing to young eyes and the story line was explained in no uncertain terms to educate someone with a first grade understanding of the world (that translates to 8th grade for most public schools). They even named the dinosaurs with cute, child-like names and gave them endearing personalities. The movie, like all modern scientific material for public consumption, left no room for discussion as to whether dinosaurs evolved into birds over the course of 50 or so million years!

As is typical in the scientific world, consensus is easier to establish than proof. People are fascinated by dinosaurs for the same reasons that they liked the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings: it stimulates the imagination (and ten million dollars of computer graphics doesn't hurt either).

So where did the birds come from? Do we have any eye witnesses? Hmmmmmm. Oh, here's one, yes, You, on the back burner of society:

Gen 1:20-23 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

To accuse evolutionists of simply lying is like accusing Judas of trespassing on temple property. These snakes are actively trying to heist a fabricated account of our origins on the public, and particularly undiscerning children, so that they can accomplish their ends of destroying God and turning men against God.

The lesson from all this? Hold your head high and speak with confidence and a percentage of people will buy what you're selling (thus "cat people"). But...

Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Sorry to those of you who bought "authentic dinosaur feathers" from the travelling paleontologist. I fear they're doomed to the same devaluation as Beanie Babies, and stock in Countrywide.