archeopterix was a bird…this is just a dino…it couldn’t even fly.
So when are you going to show these transitional fossils you keep harping on about?

Dr. Scott http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEnFJTgr9x4&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=F2E17B4CDCCE15F5

Professor Dennett: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CimqEnhIAgw&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=F2E17B4CDCCE15F5

A really old “true” bird” (i.e. from before theropods existed) would come close to falsifying the theropod-to-birds hypothesis, but not one as old as this fossil.

I repeat, this isn’t at all a problem for a historical science like paleontology, where one has to work with very limited data (at least as compared to experimental sciences). It’s just not what Ben called a “straight forward prediction.”

Finding such a fossil confirms both evolution and the dino to bird hypothesis within evolution.

Not finding such fossils does not immediately falsify the theory, but the longer and more thoroughly we look for such fossils without finding them the more unlikely they become and the theory starts to look shaky. If in the 150 years since Darwin we found few or no transitional fossils, the creationists might have a point. But the fact is we have found a steady stream of them.

The third possibility is that we find fossils of species that are in a morphological and/or temporal sequence that are incompatible with common descent. This could mean finding birds in early strata, like the Cambrian, long long before they should exist. Or this could mean finding species that impossibly combine specific features (homologous, not just analogous) from disparate groups – horses with bird wings and feathers. Or, ironically, Cameron’s ridiculous crocoduck, which would actually count against evolution, not support it.

If a fossil was found that was only bird-like, that would have falsified the hypothesis. A fossil that was only dinosaur-like would not have falsified it because reminant dinosaurs may have still been extant.

Of course, this isn’t a real objection to using common descent as a framework for paleontology, since anything close to *hard* predictions as described above are only made in the experimental, and not in the historical, sciences.

I completely disagree. The fact is there are countless patterns in the fossil record that are not compatible with common descent. There are significantly fewer that are compatible (it is a tiny subset of the almost limitless possible morphologies and temporal sequences). I don’t know how you could do statistics on this.

The fact is there is simply no reason, according to special creation, why we would have ever found feathered dinosaurs at all, let alone during the correct time periods. The hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs predicted that we would. The finding of these specimens is powerful confirmation of not only evolution but of bird evolution from dinosaurs specifically.

This also is more evidence that evolution has both extreme explanatory and predictive power.

Don’t you have to qualify that claim a bit, since not finding AH would not falsify the dino/bird theory? Don’t you have to look at the grand scheme of the fossil record and make some kind of statistical argument for the likelihood of finding x number of transitional specimens per probable gaps of a generally established tree of life given the ratio of fossils we find from particular geological periods? It’s not a straight forward prediction. It’s a very messy one and you’ve used rather strong language. Just sayin.

It is a nice retro-fit, I’ll say that, for sure.

Ben