Flightless Archaeopteryx theory reported in Nature News 12 November 2013. Michael Habib, a biologist at the University of Southern California has a new theory on Archaeopteryx: rather than being a “proto-bird”, i.e. a dinosaur evolving into a flying bird, it was a flying bird that was evolving into a flightless bird. Habib carried out a study of limb proportions and feather symmetry of living birds and compared them with Archaeopteryx. According to Nature News, “he found that the creature’s traits were surprisingly similar to those of modern flightless birds such as rails and grebes that frequently dwell on islands”. Habib commented: “We know Archaeopteryx was living on an archipelago during the Jurassic. And with its feathers and bones looking so much like modern flightless island birds, it just makes me wonder”.
Editorial Comment: What a conundrum for the evolutionists now. If Archaeopteryx was losing its flight ability it was degenerating, not evolving. If its skeletal proportions and feathers were like rails and grebes, we need to keep in mind those creatures are birds, not dinosaurs. Lose, lose for the evolutionists. We still have to ask: what actually was Archaeopteryx, but there is little need for wild speculation. The actual evidence, i.e. the fossils, shows that Archaeopteryx was its own distinct kind, and until we can find a more feathered version, we have no evidence it was evolving from or degenerating into anything else.
It is probably best to think of Archaeopteryx as the platypus of the flying world, i.e. a mixture of characteristics, but unrelated to any other creature. The fact that it no longer exists is a reminder that there were once more flying creatures in the world, and their fossils are remnants of a world that started out good but has degenerated, but they are not evidence of a world evolving upwards. (Ref. birds, ornithology, flight)
Evidence News, No. 23/13, 20 November 2013