A preserved dinosaur tail with feathers on it has been found

Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/health/dinosaur-tail-trapped-in-amber-trnd/index.html

I’d love proponents of both evolution and ID to tell me how their theories predicted this, along with supporting documentation from before the discovery. Thanks!

226 thoughts on “A preserved dinosaur tail with feathers on it has been found

  1. Entropy: Interesting that I never heard of such a power.

    So natural selection does not have the power to select the more useful and less superfluous option.

    Interesting,

    Just what of value does NS do then?

    peace

  2. phoodoo: You mean feathers on geese were selected for their warmth?And then they just so happened to allow them to fly?

    I wonder if there are different types of feathers? I guess that is just too ridiculous to imagine

  3. phoodoo,

    phoodoo: Penguins evolved feathers to stay warm?

    Man, you evolutionists can tell some wild tales.

    Just answering your question “ And yet we have no examples of modern animals using feathers for insulation.“

    And yet we do.

  4. fifthmonarchyman: Apparently lots of dinos got along just fine with out feathers.

    Yeah, so what? So did amphibians.

    Even dinos existing in the same time and place as the feathered ones

    Same for the tuatara’s relatives.

    If your ancestors didn’t evolve feathers you don’t get to use them for insulation.

    Lots of animals get along with out feathers as insulation today as well. Some would say fur is a better insulation and it’s certainly simpler than feathers.

    Maybe it’s your own superfluous arguments that make you think that superfluity evolves.

    Down is certainly cheaper insulation for the calories, although it would hardly matter if fur were better for the animals that evolved feathers and not fur (a big point is that fur and feathers simply are not options for lineages that evolved one or the other, unlike actual designed features). Maybe you should start to think about these matters, rather than simply throwing your considerable ignorance at them.

    Glen Davidson

  5. fifthmonarchyman: Lots of animals get along with out feathers as insulation today as well. Some would say fur is a better insulation and it’s certainly simpler than feathers.

    Wonder why penguins don’t have fur then? Interesting design choice

  6. GlenDavidson: If birds’ ancestors were flightless dinosaurs, those particular ancestors (and their close relatives) should have feathers, then.

    You would have to assume that feathers evolved before the avalian lineage split of from non-avialan dinosaurs. I don’t think there was any evidence this should be the case before feathered dinosaurs were actually found. I believe some scientists even refused to accept Caudipteryx was not a bird because it had feathers.

  7. Rumraket,

    Haha, yes, I took a stroll over and see I’m subject to my very own OP too, over my use of the phrase ‘phylogenetic nested hierarchy’, claiming it a contradiction in terms. In evidence, he links to a lengthy piece by his go-to authority on nested hierarchies, Knox, without in any way indicating how it supports his claim.

  8. fifthmonarchyman: The amazing thing is that evolution repeatedly produces things by accident that are unnecessary and superfluous when they arise but will turn out to be critical and brilliant from an engineering perspective later on.

    Feathers are useless unless they are used in flight? Did you realize what that means for quite a number of creations from you brilliant Designer? 😀

  9. GlenDavidson: Down is certainly cheaper insulation for the calories, though it would hardly matter if fur were better in animals that evolved feathers and not fur.

    That is exactly my point.

    Dinos evolved feathers when it would have be less superfluous to evolve fur.

    Yet feathers turned out in hindsight to be just the ticket when it came to taking flight when fur would not have been.

    Like I said it’s amazing

    peace

  10. Corneel: You would have to assume that feathers evolved before the avalian lineage split of from non-avialan dinosaurs. I don’t think there was any evidence this should be the case before feathered dinosaurs were actually found.

    No, it was an evolutionary prediction, that feathers would have first evolved for reasons other than flight. That’s why it’s a prediction, it comes prior to the evidence, from the theory.

    I believe some scientists even refused to accept Caudipteryx was not a bird because it had feathers.

    If so, they weren’t thinking very clearly. But it can be tricky to figure out whether some flightless feathered organism is or is not a bird, because some early flightless birds would appear rather dinosaurian (not avian), after all. I know that some of what were once thought to be feathered (non-avian) dinosaurs were later thought to be birds that evolved flightlessness.

    Glen Davidson

  11. My theory of retarded creationists (excuse the redundancy) predicted this thread would cause creotard ruffled feathers

  12. newton: Wonder why penguins don’t have fur then?

    Uh, because they are birds and not mammals

    newton: Interesting design choice

    Using the materiel you already have for different purposes is good design 101

    peace

  13. fifthmonarchyman: That is exactly my point.

    Dinos evolved feathers when it would have be less superfluous to evolve fur.

    There’s no “less superfluous to evolve fur.” You don’t get a choice. And you completely ignored the fact that feathers are better insulation for the calories, which doesn’t at all suggest that feathers are “superfluous” in any way (it’s hard to know for sure if they always were better insulation, but it could be).

    Yet feathers turned out in hindsight to be just the ticket when it came to taking flight when fur would not have been.

    Like I said it’s amazing

    peace

    Yes, it’s amazing that you utterly ignore the value of feathers as insulation, then ignore the fact that bats don’t get feathers even though they’re excellent for sculpting aerodynamic shapes.

    The obvious point (to those not hating evolution, anyway): No one designed bats by fitting structure to needs, rather, heredity determined what bats were able to use for flight. Not what’s reasonable to expect of a spectacularly intelligent designer, but quite what one expects of known evolutionary processes.

    Glen Davidson

  14. GlenDavidson,

    Geese.

    Kind of the point of down coats.

    Phoodoo showing how little he knows, yet again.

    Any temperate latitude passerine. The list goes on.

  15. GlenDavidson: No, it was an evolutionary prediction, that feathers would have first evolved for reasons other than flight. That’s why it’s a prediction, it comes prior to the evidence, from the theory.

    I don’t dispute that. But feathers could still be restricted to avialan dinosaurs, if they evolved after the split from other dinosaur lineages.

    GlenDavidson: If so, they weren’t thinking very clearly.

    Heh, in hindsight things are so much easier. But the scientific consensus that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs came surprisingly late (in the 1980s and 1990s). There is a nice lemma on wikipedia about the debate.

  16. fifthmonarchyman: …

    Yet feathers turned out in hindsight to be just the ticket when it came to taking flight when fur would not have been.

    I think there are a few million bats who would disagree with you.

  17. Fair Witness: I think there are a few million bats who would disagree with you.

    So bats can fly because they have fur???

    The general absence of fur on bat wings would seem to point to fur being a hindrance rather than an asset when if comes to flight.

    The lack of bat species active in cold climates in winter would also argue that fur is not the best possible choice when it comes to flight.

    peace

  18. fifthmonarchyman: So natural selection does not have the power to select the more useful and less superfluous option.

    Of course not. Natural selection is not a magical being, it’s a natural phenomenon. It can only select from what’s available in a given population, not from what’s available in a different population.

    But your original claim was “the supposed ruthless power of natural selection to remove anything that is unnecessary and superfluous.”

    You were originally talking about removal of anything superfluous and unnecessary, not about alternative solutions to a problem. Not the same thing, but nice try.

    fifthmonarchyman:
    Interesting,

    Yeah! You’re pretty good at missing your own point! That’s very interesting.

    fifthmonarchyman:
    Just what of value does NS do then?

    Value? It’s a natural phenomenon (more like a bunch of natural phenomena). I don’t think of natural phenomena in terms of value, more like in terms of how much I understand about how the world works. I never thought of it this way. Interesting. What of value does gravitation do? Feels weird to think on those terms.

  19. fifthmonarchyman: So bats can fly because they have fur???

    The general absence of fur on bat wings would seem to point to fur being a hindrance rather than an asset when if comes to flight

    peace

    The important point is the absence of feathers on bats.

    Shouldn’t the “designer” have reused his wonderful feathers by putting them on bats? Wouldn’t that have been “good design 101” , as you called it? Why didn’t he ?

  20. fifthmonarchyman: So bats can fly because they have fur???

    The general absence of fur on bat wings would seem to point to fur being a hindrance rather than an asset when if comes to flight

    peace

    So bats have a suboptimal design?

  21. Fair Witness: Shouldn’t the “designer” have reused his wonderful feathers by putting them on bats?

    Why do that??
    We already have birds.

    Corneel: So bats have a suboptimal design?

    Not at all.

    Bats have great design especially considering the fact that they don’t have feathers

    peace

  22. fifthmonarchyman: Corneel: So bats have a suboptimal design?

    Not at all.

    Bats have great design especially considering the fact that they don’t have feathers

    Do you know what “optimal” means?

  23. Entropy: You were originally talking about removal of anything superfluous and unnecessary, not about alternative solutions to a problem.

    uh

    The alternative to superfluous and unnecessary would be necessary and not superfluous.

    I thought that was obvious

    Entropy: I don’t think of natural phenomena in terms of value, more like in terms of how much I understand about how the world works.

    OK so you don’t see features like feathers as valuable for flight and installation.

    Instead things just are the way they are because the world works that way.
    How is Darwinism not just the truism. “Things are what they are”

    peace

  24. Corneel: Do you know what “optimal” means?

    yes, Do you?

    Optimal does not mean perfect it means the best possible given the constraints you have

    peace

  25. fifthmonarchyman: Optimal does not mean perfect it means the best possible given the constraints you have

    And what constraints does the maker of universes and their laws have, precisely?

  26. fifthmonarchyman: Using the materiel you already have for different purposes is good design 101

    So your idiot savant god is into recycling? Why, when it can simply create matter from nothing?

  27. Corneel: Feathers are not optimal for mammals because … ?

    because mammals are defined as

    quote:

    : any of a class (Mammalia) of warm-blooded higher vertebrates (such as placentals, marsupials, or monotremes) that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands, have the skin usually more or less covered with hair, and include humans

    end quote:

    from here

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mammal

    OMagain: I’m quite sure if your designer/god/idiot savant wanted feathers on fish it could make it so.

    no, omnipotence does not mean you can violate the law of non-contradiction

    peace

  28. OMagain: So your idiot savant god is into recycling? Why, when it can simply create matter from nothing?

    God can create matter from nothing but because of the law of noncontradiction he can’t put feathers on a mammal

    I really wish they would teach basic logic in school, It would make discussions like this a lot easier

    peace

  29. fifthmonarchyman: The alternative to superfluous and unnecessary would be necessary and not superfluous.

    Selection between options implies disappearance on some options in favour of another. Not exactly the same as removing some unnecessary characteristic.You were talking about a “ruthless power of natural selection to remove anything that is unnecessary and superfluous.” Then you moved to selection of most useful and less superfluous option, which was wrong again on two accounts: it can only select from available options, and of those, the best won’t necessary prevail. It all depends on how strongly is one favoured over the other.

    I’m impressed by your ability to miss your original points and still make it appear as if you were right all along. You’re a very talented bullshitter. Truly impressive.

    fifthmonarchyman: OK so you don’t see features like feathers as valuable for flight and installation.

    Wow! That talent of yours is astounding! A feature is not the same as the natural phenomena that might be behind how it came to be. Natural selection results in features that can be pretty dangerous to us, pretty useful, pretty useful to some other life form, pretty who-cares for us, etc. So, assigning value to the phenomenon sounds weird to me. But I’m not stoping you. It’s just a point of view. If you like that kind of thinking that’s all right. You don’t need to justify it to me. You don’t need my permission.

    fifthmonarchyman: Instead things just are the way they are because the world works that way.
    How is Darwinism not just the truism. “Things are what they are”

    I do not understand why you would blame Darwin for things being the way that they are. It’s like blaming Newton for things being the way they are. Things are the way they are because the world works that way, whether you think that the world works that way because some magical being made it so, or not. You might move your truism one step at most: the magical being is the way it is just because that’s the way it is. The magical being is what it is. The world is the way it is because the magical being wanted it to be what it is. Not very impressive.

    Why did you go crazy out of a meaningless point? All I said is that I never thought of natural phenomena that way. That I found it weird. That doesn’t mean that you need my permission to think that way. If it feels natural to you, you’re welcome to have it.

  30. fifthmonarchyman: God can create matter from nothing but because of the law of noncontradiction he can’t put feathers on a mammal

    I really wish they would teach basic logic in school, It would make discussions like this a lot easier

    Yes, I second that.

    That last sentence, that is.

  31. Entropy: Selection between options implies disappearance on some options in favour of another.

    The options in this case are feathers verses non feathers or GlenDavidson’s pycnofibers I suppose. I thought that was obvious.

    Entropy: All I said is that I never thought of natural phenomena that way. that I found it weird.

    I find it weird that you spend bandwith on telling stuff like that when you could have just as easily moved on with your life with out telling us about your own personal subjective feelings.

    but that is just me

    peace

  32. fifthmonarchyman: God can create matter from nothing but because of the law of noncontradiction he can’t put feathers on a mammal

    Yet he could make both with homologous bones (you know, from before divergence), and a host of homologous genes (again, from before divergence).

    But heaven forbid that he sculpt bats aerodynamically using feathers. Somehow he can’t transfer anything newer between bats and birds, only the older stuff. Just like evolution.

    Glen Davidson

  33. Corneel: The Designer is constrained by the definition of mammals in the Merriam-Webster dictionary?

    no just logic.

    Words have meanings.

    That fact is not changed by where the meanings are recorded

    peace

  34. GlenDavidson: But heaven forbid that he sculpt bats aerodynamically using feathers.

    If he did they would not be bats any longer. They would be birds. We already have birds

    come on man think

    peace

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