There’s a Dinosaur in Your Backyard!

…so states the title of an article in a recent National Geographic magazine in an attempt to persuade us that dinosaurs evolved into birds. This is one of the “hot” topics in evolution today.

The Nature of the Beast

The idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs is not a new theory. It was first proposed by Thomas Huxley, a friend of Charles Darwin, in 1868, when he noticed that there were certain similarities between the bones of chickens and certain dinosaur fossils.

His idea held until a book was published in 1926 that claimed that both birds and dinosaurs came from a reptile much earlier in time. In 1977, Huxley’s idea was reintroduced and has been given a “shot in the arm” with the discovery of certain interesting fossils in China, some of which are being hailed as the “discoveries of the century”. This is evolution’s hot news.

Fierce debating has erupted between the two camps. On the one side are those who study fossils, the paleontologists (who agree with Huxley), and in the other camp are the ornithologists, the bird experts. Both are attempting to figure out how we got birds from a reptile in the primordial past. After all, look at their chart. What’s the next thing in line after the reptile? …the bird!

I don’t know — to me, the battle seems akin to that of arguing whether Santa Claus comes down through the chimney or out through the faucet. Both sides in such an argument are forgetting that neither is possible, and that Santa doesn’t even exist!

Darwinian evolution, which claims that one kind of creature can change to another kind (through huge amounts of time and huge amounts of “information-adding accident”) also doesn’t exist. According to the Bible, the exact opposite happened. God made birds first, on Day #5 of the creation, then land-based creatures, including dinosaurs, on Day #6.

What is a bird, anyway?

The answer to this would depend on who you ask. We tend to think of a bird as having a beak, hollow bones, a wishbone, feathers, specialized lungs, etc. However, the important answer comes from the Bible. The “fowl” that God made on day #5 is defined simply as a creature that has a covering of feathers…that’s all! Therefore, arguments over why there are several similarities between certain dinosaurs and birds can be simply explained as having a common designer who decided to put similar “parts” in different creatures.

Can a Dinosaur Evolve into a Bird?

In order for any organism to turn into another kind of organism, there would need to be many, many positive, information-adding changes made on the DNA code of the creature doing the changing. Each part (indeed, each function of each part) of a living organism is determined by genetic information on the DNA molecule. In nature, mistakes in the copying of genetic information during cell division are called mutations, which normally have a negative effect on the organism. Mutations never produce more order in an organism. That is, mutations do not, and cannot, add information that is not already there. That is called “macroevolution”, or Darwinian evolution, and has never been observed.

“Microevolution”, on the other hand, is quite well understood as the cause behind minor genetic changes within a kind. This is what gives us all the varieties of dog “kind” we have in the world. It acts upon information that is already there. Therefore, it is possible for a reptile to change slightly as natural selection acts on its genetic code, but it always stays a reptile. It is impossible for nature to add more information to make all the many, complicated but necessary changes to turn it into a bird. These creatures are different “kinds” of animals with very unique parts. One cannot possibly turn into the other.

Are Birds Highly Evolved Dinosaurs?
(A Look at an Evolutionary Chart)

On the face of it, this would seem like an absolutely foolish question to ask. But, believe it or not, this is a major evolutionary theory that has had new life breathed into it recently because of new fossil discoveries in China. Perhaps you’ve heard all the hype. Based on these fossils, it would seem that the evolutionists might have a point, but then…they thought the same thing about the evidence for “Nebraska Man”, that turned out to be a pig’s tooth. The same is true with this scenario. A chart very similar to the one below appeared in the July, 1998 issue of National Geographic. For starters, note the definitive title. It’s “The Path to Birds”, as though this is already proven empirically beyond question. Like always, the charts that evolutionists use look good from their point of view. It would certainly seem like a nice progression from dinosaurs to birds pictured here. However, if you look into it, the chart falls apart. In this article I will list just some of the reasons why.

The first creature on their chart is classed as a theropod, a meat-eating dinosaur. The fossil shows some “filaments”, evidence of something that might have been growing on its body. Evolutionists hope that these are early, evolving feathers, called “protofeathers”. Whatever they prove to be, the idea that they were evolving is just that – an idea, an assumption. And if they were feathers at all, then the creature was certainly a flightless bird. But, perhaps these were just the remnants of some growth on the surface of the dinosaur’s skin. After all, there are many examples of lizards with all kinds of appendages on the surface of the skin.

Unenlagia, the large “bird-like creature”, was concocted from some fragments of bone that Argentinian archaeologists hope was a bird. There were no feathered imprints, but they gave it the name “half-bird” anyway! The Velociraptor was included in their chart because he has a supposed “wishbone” which was always assumed to be strictly an avian trait. Not necessarily so! According to the Bible, these creatures all had a common designer – God. He obviously included some similar design features in a variety of creatures depending on what He wanted them to be able to do. However, the “wishbone” in Velociraptor has never been proved to actually be a wishbone.

Note the two in the middle. If these creatures actually looked like this, then they were obviously birds – flightless, perhaps, but still birds. The last three on their chart are all birds, though Archaeopteryx is believed by many to be a fake (now wouldn’t that be a surprise!). Incidentally, note that no dates, or any other pertinent information is on the chart.

The evolutionists have told us how old these creatures are. Their dating methods are highly assumptive and suspicious, of course, but using their own dates, if we redo the chart, placing the creatures where they belong on a timeline, the chart would look like this one below. Notice anything strange?

For starters, the order is reversed. The known dinosaur, Velociraptor, is the youngest “intermediate” creature on the chart! The creatures numbered 2 – 6 all predate him by 50 million years!! And note where Archaeopteryx is now. This creature is far more “bird-like” than any of them, yet predates them by another 30 million years!! Also, the creatures numbered 3 – 6 were all found in the same layer at the same place in China(!), yet they span the entire time frame of their chart (they claim that #4 was a dinosaur, #5 & #6were “intermediate”, but now note that they have cleverly omitted a drawing of #3, found in the same spot as the others, but completely a modern bird!! Also, #2 is completely a modern bird, the fossil of which was found in Spain.).

This short article only attempts to deal briefly with some inconsistencies in the evolutionists’ chart. Many scientific reasons exist that completely remove any possibility that dinosaurs could evolve into birds. Of course, the Bible, the final authority, claims that God made the birds on Day #5 of the creation, and land-dwelling creatures (including dinosaurs) on Day #6. □ B