Birds didn’t evolve from dinosaurs?

A number of legitimate evolutionary biologists say, instead, the class Aves and the dinosaur members of class Reptilia’s subclass Diapsida evolved separately from a common ancestor. Their latest claim of support? The fixed nature of the femur in birds; Aves being the only class of vertebrates to be so structured.

Interesting.

Pterosaurs didn’t fly

So says a Japanese researcher, claiming his studies of bird wing aerodymanics show the winged dinosaurs were just too heavy. While they might be able to glide, they were as much as 90 pounds too heavy to fly in windless conditions, Katsufumi Sato claims.

Pterosaur “fans” are up in arms, or wings, about the claim.

Friday scatblogging – gold in that thar dinoscat

A dinosaur coprolite, a mere 130 million years old, sold Wednesday for $960 at auction in New York City, more than twice the starting price of $450.

Buyer Steve Tsengas of Fairport Harbor, Ohio, owns OurPets, a company that sells products to treat dog and cat waste.

Tsengas bought the dung in hopes of motivating his employees and using it as a marketing tool by displaying it at the company's booth at trade shows, he said.

“Poop,” he said, “is a big business in the pet industry.”

No shit?

And, that coprolite looks like petrified wood. I’m even wondering if you couldn’t cut it with a fine-grade masonry saw and polish it up like a flat slab of petrified wood.

T Rex tastes like chicken?

Well, maybe. Evolutionary biologists were able to scavenge enough DNA from a Tyrannasaurus rex fossil to determine chickens were among its closest biological relatives.

The research published this week in the journal Science marked “the first use of molecular data to place a non-avian dinosaur in a phylogenetic tree that traces the evolution of species,” the journal said.

“These results match predictions made from skeletal anatomy, providing the first molecular evidence for the evolutionary relationships of a non-avian dinosaur,” co-author Chris Organ, a postdoctoral researcher in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University said.

“Though we only had six peptides — just 89 amino acids — from T. rex, we were able to establish these relationships with a relatively high degree of support,” he added.

“With more data, we’d likely see the T. rex branch on the phylogenetic tree between alligators and chickens and ostriches, though we can't resolve this position with currently available data,” he added.

This is big stuff on several counts.

First, the ability to use such slim remnants of DNA for this testing.

Second, it more clearly opens to debate the question about whether or not any dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

Third, in the face of the propaganda film “Crossroads” “Expelled,” this shows how science actually works. (For more about the movie, see Expelled.)

Oh, and it’s too bad the T. rex DNA came from a femur. If it had been a coprolite, I’d have a bonus issue of scatblogging coming up.