Bird breathing challenges dino theory, according to ScienceDaily 9th June 2009 and Fossil Science 11th June 2009. Birds have a distinctive breathing system that involves passing air through a series of balloon-like sacs as well as their lungs. A group of scientists at Oregon State University (OSU) has made a careful study of how birds breathe and found that they use their thighs to support the air sacs in the abdomen, rather than for walking. Devon Quick, a zoologist at OSU explained: “This is fundamental to bird physiology. It’s really strange that no one realized this before. The position of the thigh bone and muscles in birds is critical to their lung function, which in turn is what gives them enough lung capacity for flight.”
It has long been known that birds keep their thigh bones held rigidly to the sides of their bodies and walk with most of the movement occurring at the knees rather than their hips. This is a very different form of locomotion from other land animals and presents a real challenge to the belief that running dinosaurs evolved into birds. John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology, explained that theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link. A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset. Although dinosaur to bird evolution is presented in both professional and popular media as a given fact there is growing evidence against it. Ruben commented: “For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from. That’s a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.” The researchers believe that dinosaurs and birds evolved independently from a common ancestor.
Editorial Comment: Ruben’s comment is important – you cannot just add feathers to a dinosaur and expect it to fly, or walk, like a bird. Birds have a combination of special structures, including their unique one-way-flow lungs that enable them to fly and walk the way they do. There is another important structural problem that has been overlooked by evolutionists, although it has been known about for a long time. Dinosaurs are classified into two groups according to whether they have bird-like hip bones or lizard-like hip bones. Theropods, the dinosaurs that are supposed to have evolved into birds, have lizard hips. As more evidence from fossils and living creatures is gathered it is about time scientists admitted that birds are designed to be birds and dinosaurs to be dinosaurs, each with their own unique combination of features. (Ref. respiration, anatomy, reptiles, aves)
Evidence News 24 June 2009