Romans 1:22
"Recent Darwin Party inductee Zixiao Yang from the University of Cork pops the cork on his new discovery of imaginary feathers on a dinosaur. He has learned his propaganda lessons well. If feathers don’t exist on a fossil that needs them, make some up!
Want to see a feathered dinosaur? Here’s one, he promises. Behold—it had scaly skin like a reptile! Be impressed! Applaud!
Wait a minute; you were looking for feathers, like what birds wear—not bristles.
Q: More scales?
Want to see a feathered dinosaur? Here’s one, he promises. Behold—it had scaly skin like a reptile! Be impressed! Applaud!
"Our study shows that at least some feathered dinosaurs still had scaly skin, like reptiles today. This evidence comes from a new specimen of Psittacosaurus, a horned dinosaur with bristle-like feathers on its tail. Psittacosaurus lived in the early Cretaceous period (about 130 million years ago), but its clan, the ornithischian dinosaurs, diverged from other dinosaurs much earlier, in the Triassic period (about 240 million years ago)."
Wait a minute; you were looking for feathers, like what birds wear—not bristles.
"In the new specimen, the soft tissues are hidden to the naked eye. Under ultraviolet light, however, scaly skin reveals itself in an orange-yellow glow. The skin is preserved on the torso and limbs which are parts of the body that didn’t have feathers."
Q: More scales?
Q: Where are the feathers on this dinosaur?
Yang is just teasing the reader, building up for the climax.
Q: Do you get the picture now?
"The fossil skin cells have much in common with modern reptile skin cells. They share a similar cell size and shape and they both have fused cell boundaries – a feature known only in modern reptiles.
The distribution of the fossil skin pigment is identical to that in modern crocodile scales. The fossil skin, though, seems relatively thin by reptile standards. This suggests the fossil scales in Psittacosaurus were also similar in composition to reptile scales."
Q: Do you get the picture now?
This dinosaur had thinner scales than crocs.
The skin must have been getting ready for feathers to evolve.
---The dinosaur was thinking about it."
CEH
