Glen Holley:
I'm going to give you an example here, a comparison of words and ideas in order to clarify my point, as it exists in direct opposition to yours - with a strategy of changing your mind by presenting indisputable facts regarding the evolution of life on Earth for the past 4 billion years, starting mainly with The Cambrian Explosion, which saw the first complex, multicellular animals with organ systems - the amphibians and reptiles. And those guys are still kicking it, right? Kudos to them!
Now I want to bring up the great apes... Hominids, or more technically - Hominidae, which constitute two families of the great apes superfamily, Hominoidea. The other distinctive families of great apes are the Hylobatidae (gibbons). These two families of Hominidae include great apes such as orangutans (pongo), gorillas (gorilla), chimpanzees and bonobos (pan) and Homo Sapiens.
There, I hope that made sense to you. Just keep reading it until it does, if it doesn't.
Typically, this family of Hominidae is further classified into two more families, distinct from Hominoidea and Hylobatidae. One called Ponginae contains only the orangutan, and the other Hominidae consist of humans and the African great apes...
Although many hominids, including homo sapiens, bonobos, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans are considered to belong to the great apes family, none of these apes can viably reproduce with a human, or even from ponder species to another!
So the obvious conclusion here is that human beings, or Homo Sapiens are an entirely new and distinct form of great ape. In saying that, I'm making an extremely important distinction between humans and the other great apes, such as gorillas and chimps.
This is a very important observation, because it signifies the first MAJOR divergence in the families of apes, both lesser and great, since Austropilithicines was first discovered.
It would be a mistake to classify Homo Sapiens as closely related with our distant relative species, the great apes, because they are not the same species. They barely exist within the same family. I believe right underneath the family is the genus, and that's where most of the great apes reside individually. Hominidae is one of the families of great apes, and Ponginae is the other.
The reason why I'm talking about great apes, is because I'm using them as a direct comparison to the dinosaurs. At least the ones that survived. Now, I haven't reached the real detail regarding 'dinosaur survivability' just yet, but hey, just bear with me,k? I'll get there.
Firstly, so far:
Do you see the point I'm building up to? Let's look at things from a slightly different angle. Currently, today, there are four distinct families of apes, belonging to two superfamilies - Hominidae, the great apes and Ponginae, the lesser apes. Homo Sapiens belongs to the family Hominidae, or Hominid, along with the families, genus, and subspecies of great apes, consisting of about eight subspecies.
It should go without saying that none of the species or subspecies in either superfamily of apes, be it the great apes or the lesser apes, can mate with one another.
Therefore, they all belong to different species. This means that CURRENTLY, there are families of great apes which survive concurrently with the other species, such as the families of primates, and homo sapiens.
Now, a few paragraphs ago I made the distinction between Homo Sapiens and the great apes because Homo Sapiens has clearly evolved from great apes, and beyond, into something spectacular...
A life form invented by mother Earth, which then deposited us here upon her surface to do with it as we must in order to preserve life throughout the galaxy for the greater good, even at the sacrifice of the parent planet.
That simple concept is what makes Homo Sapiens completely special, and even the simplest single celled bacterium, because as far as we know, there is no other life in the universe. I'll admit it... that seems kind of unlikely that out of the trillions of galaxies and septillions of stars, only a few microbes have spontaneously created life from non-living matter, the way it happened here on Earth - as far as we know.
The answer to the question of 'where are all the aliens', is that there might be some kind of great filter which kills off alien species before they can get a chance to develop any real technology.
Or, and to me this is the much more likely scenario - life in this universe is incredibly rare. Think. Every single condition had to be met PERFECTLY for life to gain a foothold on Earth.
1. Our absolutely massive Moon.
The Earths' Moon is the largest in the solar system in relation to its' parent body. In fact, the Earth-Moon system is a double planet. As for the formation of the Moon... It is theorized that a Mars-sized planet named Theia collided a glancing blow to the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, and within a year, the moon had formed from the orbital debris, and the Earth was spinning far more quickly and was on its' way back to recovery. The importance of the Moon cannot be understated - the Moon keeps our axial tilt at precisely 23.5°, giving us the four seasons, and the Moon started the Earth spinning as a result of that ancient collision. It's theorized that some of the first single celled, extremely simple life forms likely formed spontaneously in tide-pools because of, you know... the Moon, and its' influence on the tides.
2. The Goldilocks Zone.
You've probably already heard of this, but there is a zone of habitability around our parent star, Sol, and given the right conditions of a planet forming inside this Goldilocks zone - a planet with a thick atmosphere and liquid water with complex chemistry occurring almost constantly - means that it's really not that unlikely of a scenario for an ideal planet for life to form in this region. As it stands, Venus is on the very inner edge of the habitable zone, and Mars is on the very outer edge. All three worlds had planet spanning oceans early in their histories.
How I would love to see those, just to go back a few billion years to see Venus covered in oceans with a comfortable temperature, and the same thing with Mars. But the Earth, who knows? It might still be in the middle of forming, with a molten lava surface. Likely though, it will have began to solidify and form plate tectonics between four and three and a half billion years ago, and over the eons, comets would have delivered most of Earth's water. Lightning storms could have provided catalysts for chemical reactions, specifically energetic reactions amongst the plentiful volatile elements which exist in the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
3. Jupiter, the Mega-Maid!
Ever since 1994 when Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, it became clear that the extremely large planet was adept at deflecting objects away from the inner solar system - objects which could have posed a hazard to planet Earth over the eons.
Now, ever since that July day in 1994 whenever we saw a comet slam into Jupiter, we've actually witnessed another one. That's two comets that Jupiter has sucked up within two decades. So, in order for life to survive, it needs to be stable environment. The Sun has been unusually stable throughout almost all of its history, and the Giant, massive outer planets have served to keep the solar system nice and tidy so that a dinosaur killer only occurs once every 100 million years or so.
4. Water, Amino acids, hydrothermal vents, phosphorus for food, and no oxygen to speak of.
This was the way it was on Earth for a billion or so years. Unicellular life had already evolved deep underneath the ocean near hydrothermic vents where nutritious materials and metals were being spewed out - materials which the single-celled bacteria used to convert to chemical energy. Then green algae evolved, one of the first plants, and over the next billion or so years again, first the oceans were saturated with oxygen, and then the atmosphere.
It proved extremely deadly to all pre-existing life, but to all life that was to come, the oxygen was absolutely necessary. Not just to breathe, but ozone is an oxygen molecule which blocks harmful UV rays from Sol.
And here are the four specific amino acids, which can come together in orders of three to form the four types of nitrogen bases found in nucleotides:
Adenine (A)
Thymine (T)
Guanine (G)
Cytosine (C)
These four amino acids will only combine 3 amino acids at a time, forming the 'ladder steps' of an RNA molecule or a DNA double helix molecule. It's not difficult to understand, but understanding exactly what code you're looking at can be daunting.
5. Spontaneous generation?
For a long time, mostly before doctors thought it was good idea to wash their hands, it was widely believed that maggots formed on rotting meat by way of spontaneously generating from nothing at all.
Ironically, this is very much likely to be the truth of how life got its' first start here on Earth. Just some incredibly lucky event - a quadrillion to one against chance led to the organization of the DNA double helix molecule and stored it as chromosomes in the nucleus of every single cell of every single and/or multicellular creature.
The odds of life spontaneously arising from dead matter are so staggeringly low, it is hard to believe it, or even give it its' fair due. What we DO know is that whenever life started on Earth, it started almost as soon as it was able to - It started about 4 billion years ago, when the surface of the Earth was still mostly molten.
This is such a gigantic 'fuck you' to the second law of thermodynamics, that codons of amino acids can just 'self organize' into more amino acids, which in turn form the specialized proteins which function by storing genetic information in the nucleus of each cell as molecules of tremendously complex design, that one really does begin to wonder about intelligent design, or panspermia at the very least. Because the alternative means that it's EASY for order to stomp a mudhole right in entropys' ass, and that should not be the case! Just check the 2nd law of thermodynamics! It's INSANE!
The only conclusion left to draw here is that we, the intelligent life which formed of Planet Earth, are EXTREMELY lucky, and hold a great burden of responsibility - to ensure the survival of life throughout the Milky Way. And the indisputable fact remains that the spontaneous formation of RNA and DNA base pairs, equipped with ribosomes for cutting the double helix DNA molecule, then putting it back together correctly but BACKWARD, suggests a level of complexity here which absolutely should not be allowed to exist because it basically gives a double middle finger to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Oh yeah, and it screws the 3rd law of thermodynamics too, which states that a system containing and doing work heat MUST lose that heat to entropy until the temperature of that body is absolute zero, which my lovelies, just ain't possible to make anything that cold!
aBck from the digression...
Over the past several million years, it had been nigh on impossible to discover, extract, and examine ancient Hominid fossils which could provide an absolute proof of 'The Missing Link'. Therefore, it would be folly to make a discovery of a brand new Hominid, then lump it under the old taxonomy of the great or lesser apes.
Now! Fun!
Answer me this question if you can. You say that all birds are dinosaurs. Oh, and just to hell with 65 million years of evolution, because screw all that - that would mean that the surviving dinosaurs may have had a really really good chance of evolving into a completely different and unique animal. You know, like a bird? One that flies? You tell me.
Were there any dinosaurs that flew? I'm not talking about pterodactyls, they weren't dinosaurs. I'm not talking about the archeopteryx, that was merely a precursor to a modern bird which happened to have its feathers fossilized very neatly.
So, according to your theory, the dinosaurs didn't have any kind of problem surviving an impact that would have changed the coastlines forever, sent up billions of tons of mantle material which over the next following few days, would re-enter the atmosphere, heating it up to about 600° all the way to the surface, killing just about everything that was too large to find shelter. 75% of all life on Earth was extinguished because of the KT impactor.
But you're telling me that the dinosaurs survived. Okay, I can dig SOME of that, a teensy PART it. Maybe they did survive for a little while. Maybe they flourished, after the Earth had cleared its atmosphere, established new food chains, repaired the biosphere, and prepared itself for a lower oxygen content by about 10%, so that warm blooded mammals could flourish. And dinosaurs, those guys were warm-blooded. You do know that, right? I sure hope so!
So anyway, after this impactor which wiped out 75% of all life on Earth, mainly on land, had set the atmosphere on fire for days, where merely standing outside would get you baked at 600 degrees because of all the in falling ejected material heating up the atmosphere as it succumbed to gravity, somehow 25% of life on Earth was left pretty much alone.
Probably the marine life, some hardy plants, some hairy rats, and a few very small dinosaurs - think, procompsignathus - which either already had feathers but almost certainly couldn't fly, or didn't have feathers at all, removing them even further from modern birds.
But dinosaurs already had feathers, I think.... but that doesn't mean that birds are dinosaurs, though. Look at that fuckin' ugly son of a bitch, the platypus. What the hell is that thing? It has hair, like a mammal, it has a bill like a bird or a duck, it has venom in its rear claws, it has a tail like a nutria rat, and it lays eggs! So tell me. What the fuck is a platypus? Don't you dare call it a dinosaur.
However, the platypus actually DOES exist, beyond all that is good and holy. It does no guys any good to wonder about this abomination. Just don't say it's a dinosaur!
I'll say ponder some thing about it... Ponder what it AIN'T. It sure ain't something that survived the KT impact 65 million years ago. I mean it's obvious this thing evolved over the next 65 million years, up until today.
So, we're forced to observe the platypus and recognize its existence. It doesn't fit neatly into any taxonomical category, except maybe mammals because the thing has more hair than it has of anything else.
So, now that I've pointed out the completely fucked up enigma of the platypus, what is that thing anyway? A dinosaur? Is the platypus a dinosaur? See, I ain't even gonna Google it. I want you to answer for the platypus! It has some things in common with birds, like laying eggs, being warm blooded, and even having a nice fancy duck bill. I'll bet you do think that this THING is a dinosaur, don't you? Hell, humans have more in common with birds than a platypus! Therefore, humans are more likely to be descended from dinosaurs. Correct?
Let's dive deep into a dinosaurs' cloaca, shall we?
The Taxonomy of Dinosaurs
The two main orders of dinosaurs are Saurischia and Ornithischia, based on their hip structure. These divisions have proved remarkably enduring, even through several seismic changes in the taxonomy of dinosaurs.
Benton classification
As most dinosaur paleontologists have advocated a shift away from traditional, ranked taxonomy in favor of phylogenetic systems, few taxonomies of dinosaurs have been published since the 1980s. The following is among the most recent, from the third edition of Vertebrate Palaeontology. The classification has been updated from the second edition in 2000 to reflect new research, but remains fundamentally conservative.
Michael Benton classifies all dinosaurs within the Series Amniota, Class Sauropsida, Subclass Diapsida, Infraclass Archosauromorpha, Division Archosauria, Subdivision Avemetatarsalia, Infradivision Ornithodira, and Superorder Dinosauria. Dinosauria is then divided into the two traditional orders, Saurischia and Ornithischia.
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READ THIS ABOUT THE DAGGER!
The dagger (†) is used to indicate taxa with no living members.
READ THIS ABOUT THE DAGGER!
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Order Saurischia
Suborder Theropoda
†Inftaorder Herrerasauria
†Infraorder Coelophysoidea
†Infraorder Ceratosauria+
†Division Neoceratosauria+
†Subdivision Abelisauroidea
†Family Abelisauridae
†Family Noasauridae
†Subdivision Ceratosauridae
Infraorder Tetanurae
†Division Megalosauria
†Subdivision Spinosauroidea
†Family Megalosauridae
†Family Spinosauridae
†Division Carnosauria
†Subdivision Allosauroidea
†Family Allosauridae
†Family Carcharodontosauridae
†Family Neovenatoridae
†Family Metriacanthosauridae
Division Coelurosauria
†Family Coeluridae
Subdivision Maniraptoriformes
†Family Tyrannosauridae
†Family Ornithomimidae
Infradivision Maniraptora
†Family Alvarezsauridae
†Family Therizinosauridae
†Cohort Deinonychosauria
†Family Troodontidae
†Family Dromaeosauridae
Class Aves
†Suborder Sauropodomorpha
†Thecodontosaurus
†Family Plateosauridae
†Riojasaurus
†Family Massospondylidae
†Infraorder Sauropoda
†Family Vulcanodontidae
†Family Omeisauridae
†Division Neosauropoda
†Family Cetiosauridae
†Family Diplodocidae
†Subdivision Macronaria
†Family Camarasauridae
†Infradivision Titanosauriformes
†Family Brachiosauridae
†Cohort Somphospondyli
†Family Euhelopodidae
†Family Titanosauridae
†Order Ornithischia Ornithischia pelvis structure.svg
†Family Pisanosauridae
†Family Fabrosauridae
†Suborder Thyreophora
†Family Scelidosauridae
†Infraorder Stegosauria
†Infraorder Ankylosauria
†Family Nodosauridae
†Family Ankylosauridae
†Suborder Cerapoda
†Infraorder Pachycephalosauria
†Infraorder Ceratopsia
†Family Psittacosauridae
†Family Protoceratopsidae
†Family Ceratopsidae
†Infraorder Ornithopoda
†Family Heterodontosauridae
†Family Hypsilophodontidae
†Family Iguanodontidae *
†Family Hadrosauridae
READ THIS ABOUT THE DAGGER!
The dagger (†) is used to indicate taxa with no living members.
READ THIS ABOUT THE DAGGER!
Wow, look at all of those daggers... or are they crosses? Nah, they're daggers. They symbolize the murder of the entire taxonomy of every dinosaur KNOWN to be alive and existing before the KT impact.
Too bad, really... there's not a single living dinosaur listed in this most comprehensive taxonomy.
Well, there it is. Some kind of taxonomy for dead dinos. All that is supposedly the taxonomy of all of the dinosaurs from the Cambrian Explosion, throughout the Ordovician Era, all through The Triassic Era, spending The Boring Billion building up the O2 and ozone by photosynthesizing green algae in the atmosphere, then on through The Jurassic Era, right up to the Cretaceous Era - at which point the Cretacious-Tertiary boundary occurs in the geologic strata, delineated by a black layer with abundant fossils underneath, and barely any above.
The black layer means a shitload of dead dinos, burnt to a crisp.
An extinction event is obvious, and once the Chixiclub crater had been confirmed by very slight fluctuations of gravity at ground zero, where mantle material must have been squashed to unreal densities and thus forming the caldera of the crater and explaining the gravitational anomalies detected by satellites, the Chixiclub crater was finally made clear.
There. The smoking gun that roasted every land animal that was too large to escape underground, or wasn't suited for survival in the oceans. Thus, the dinosaurs were pushed out of the spotlight. It was the turn of the small greasy pestilent ridden mammals that hid in filthy, musty holes in the ground. And whatever poor chickens... I mean dinosaurs that they felt sorry for.
NOT!
That an extinction event occurred 65 million years ago is now obvious, and once the presence of the Chixiclub crater had been confirmed by very slight fluctuations of gravity at ground zero, where mantle material must have been compressed enormously by the asteroid impact, the outer ring of the crater was discovered via detection of anomolous distributions of gravity which persist around the rim of the crater to this day.
Now, here's a nicely rounded taxonomy for birds too. For fun, compare it to the one up there for dinosaurs:
(NOTICE HOW THE BIRDS LISTED ARE TOTALLY NOT EXTINCT, AND THERE'S NO SIGN OF DINOSAUR ANYWHERE)
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Kingdom: Animalia
Taxonomic Rank: Class
Common Name(s):Birds [English]
Taxonomic Status:
Current standing: Valid
Data Quality Indicators:
Record Credibility Rating: Verified - standards met
Global Species Completeness: Latest Record Review: 2013
Taxonomic Hierarchy:
Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Bilateria Infrakingdom: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata, Chordates
Subphylum: Vertebrata Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclass: Tetrapoda
Class: Aves, birds
Direct Children:
Order: Accipitriformes - hawks
Order: Anderiformes - waterfoul
Order: Apodiformes - swifts
Order: Apterygiformes - kiwis
Order: Bucerotiformes - hornbills
Order: Caprimulgiformes
Order: Cariamiformes
Order: Causuariiform - emus
Order: Charadriiformes - gulls
Order: Ciconiiformes - storks
Order: Coliiformes - Colies
Order: Columbiforme - doves
Order: Coraciiformes - Kingfishers
Order: Cuculigormes - cuckoos
Order: Eurypygformes - falcons
Order: Falconiforme - falcons
Order: Galliformes - field
Order: Gaviiformes - loons
Order: Gruiformes - cranes
Order: Leptosomiformes - roller
Order: Mesitornithiformes
Order: Musophagiformes
Order: Nyctibiiformes
Order: Opisthocomiformes
Order: Otidiformes
Order: Passeriformes - perchers
Order: Pelecaniformes - herons
Order: Phaethontiformes
Order: Phoenicopteriformes – Flamingos
Order: Piciformes – eoodpeckers
Order: Podicipediformes – grebes
Order: Procellariiformes - albatross
Order: Psittaciformes – Parrots
Order: Pteroclidiformes – Sandgrouse
Order: Rheiformes - Rheas
Order: Sphenisciformes - penguins
Order: Steatornithiformes - owls
Order: Strigiformes - owls
Order: Struthioniformes - ostrich
Order: Suliformes – cormorants
Order: Tinamigormes - tinamous
Order: Trogoniformes - trogons
Ok, there. A fairly complete taxonomy of birds down to the major orders. How's does it compare to the dinosaur taxonomy chart? Home run? Close, but no banana?
I've mentioned the Dinosaur Killer, the 6 mile wide asteroid which impacted the Chixiclub basin, just North of the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, and mostly impacting completely over the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico about 65 million years ago, largely stomping out practically ALL dinosaurs bigger than a breadbox.
We know this K-T boundary located in the strata was laid down by a massive impactor because of its' location, which matches radio isotope dating which lines up to about 65 million years ago... and also, the ratios of iridium isotopes, which are extremely rare on Earth but are relatively abundant in nickel-iron and carbonaceous chondrite asteroids, is found imbedded in the KT boundary, providing literal proof that the KT boundary wasn't caused by volcanism or climate change or a supernova or a hands ray burst, for Gods'sake... It was caused by an iridium-rich nickel iron or carbonacious contrite asteroid.
So. Is it the feathers that make the dinosaur? Is that it really? Is that what's got your underwear in dire need of rescuing, the fact that a lot of dinosaurs had feathers? And that. It's a relatively new PR piece? Not to mention more accurate visual data for how dinosaurs actually looked? And here we are 65 million years later, and there sure are a shitload of creatures with feathers. Are they ALL dinosaurs??
Surely not every one of our fine feathered friends is a dinosaur! I mean, there have been cases of multiple evolutionary parts which were completely unrelated yet LED too the same function, over and over. Take the eye, for instance. That thing had evolved independently more often than feathers I'll wager, but I'll also easy that feathers also evolved multiple times, independently from ponder feathered animal to another.
The ones that are the most familiar to us, well, we call those birds, mind you, not dinosaurs. I mean, a case can be made for their very distant relation to dinosaurs, MAYBE, but it ain't a no-brainer like you make it out to be, for the love of Pete!
So the burden of proof exists with you, by proving that birds really are descended from God's own dinosaurs that survived the KT impact 65 million years ago. According to you, birds are exactly the same thing as dinosaurs. But are dinosaurs exactly the same thing as birds? It's not a trivial question. 65 million years ago, the largest mammal was about the size of a rat.
65 million years is an immense amount of time for evolution to take place, and during that time, the first primates (monkeys) and then the first great apes appeared, until Homo Sapiens had evolved to a point as to being physically indistinguishable from us today, going back 200,000 years.
The only difference between a Cro-Magnon and a modern Homo Sapiens is their culture. Before that, we had homo erectus, who was known to use tools and fire, but had a much smaller cranial capacity of about 300 square centimeters, and died out around a million years ago. Then there was homo neanderthalensis, the closest relative to modern humans which existed side by side with the Cro-Magnon people as soon as 40,000 years ago.
It's believed that cro-magnons and homo neanderthalinsis could procreate, but unfortunately the Neanderthals went extinct when the ice sheets in France melted. It truly is unfortunate, because neanderthals had an exceptional cranial capacity, rivaling cro-magnons. That's about 1200 sq cm for a neanderthal, compared to about 1400 sq cm for a modern human.
Then there's the Austropilithicines, an interesting footnote: who were among the first great apes who stood upright. These great apes have long been debated to have been our first definite lineage of ancestors, and one found in Africa was named Lucy and was carbon dated as being the oldest hominid fossil ever discovered.
A lot of people began referring to Lucy as Eve, being female, and the oldest example of a fossil which might be related to modern humans. Still, these apes went extinct about 2 million years ago.
LET'S RECAP!
So you can call a gorilla a great ape, and a human being a great ape, but you can't call a human being a gorilla. Now listen carefully. According to your logic, which isn't entirely misplaced, you can call birds dinosaurs ubiquitously, but you can't refer to all dinosaurs as birds.
There's a stupid upshot here, one that requires critical thinking and a willingness NOT to be wildly ignorant. I know, a tall order. Personally though, I'd rather be right than wrong. And since I'm not disagreeing with you 100% - I'm disagreeing with what seems a reckless bit of ubiquitousness naivety on your part - I'm still willing to be convinced, if you can convince me.
Still, the fact remains that you are simply ignoring 65 million years of evolution! Where is your evidence that modern-day dinosaurs, or the birds descended from dinosaurs, would be able to procreate with their ancient brethren? Even if the offspring was sterile? When does a dinosaur stop being a dinosaur, 65 million years later?
Want me to provide some good hard evidence just like the kind I asked for from you, right this second? Ok.
One more thing. Monkeys. Monkeys are, of course, primates, but they are not great apes. However, they are related to great apes, and that relation also extends to humans, but more distantly. However, it's one which saw monkeys split from great apes millions of years ago, which gave rise to the great apes we know today, including us.
But it is a grand mistake to call a human being a monkey, because humans are not monkeys. Gorillas are not monkeys, either. They all have a common ancestry, though. See how you can take yourself up in the midst of your fervor, even if cold hard evidence begins to wear down on you? Why would you want that?
Now, I do believe birds, at least some of them, are descended from some of the smaller, hardier dinosaurs which were able to survive the KT impact. However, a lot of evolution can take place over 65 million years. Just up and saying that all birds are dinosaurs is a logical fallacy and really is irresponsible.
