Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in the true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird...Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth bound, dinosaur, but it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that. AlanFeduccia, Evidence From Claw Geometry indicating Arboreal Habits of Archaeopteryx, Science 259, February 3, 1993.
Evolutionist Colin Patterson, a former senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, perhaps summed it up the best when he admitted that Archaeopteryx 'has simply become a patsy for wishful thinking.' C. Patterson, in Darwin's Enigma by Luther D. Sunderland, p. 70, 1984
The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved. W.E. Swinton, Biology and Comparaitive Physiology, ed. A.J. Marshall, Academic Press, NY, Vol. 1, p.11
Unfortunately, the intermediate stages hardly ever seemed to exist in the fossil record (Huxley's later trumpeting about Archaeopteryx notwithstanding). M.Ridley, Nature, 286:444 (1980)
At the morphological level feathers are traditionally considered homologous with reptilian scales. However, in development, morphogenesis [shape/form generation], gene structure, protein shape and sequence, and filament formation and structure, feathers are different.
A. H. Brush, 'On the Origin of Feathers,' Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 9:131-142, 1996
Even though we have no direct evidence for smooth transitions, can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms, that is, viable, functioning organisms, between ancestors and descendants? Of what possible use are the incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing? Stephen J. Gould, Natural History, Vol. 86, pp. 2-30
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Category: Creation Science
