Talk:Origin of birds/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

T Rex soft tissue- false report

Should this section be removed as unproven and not replicated?

The ground-breaking discovery of fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex soft tissue allowed a molecular comparison of cellular anatomy and protein sequencing of collagen tissue, both of which demonstrated that T. rex and birds are more closely related to each other than either is to Alligator.[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17431180

Steven Salzberg2013 Nov 04 11:10 a.m. 8 of 8 people found this helpful This is the first in a series of reports, all coming from the same lab, claiming to have found extant protein sequences in 68-million-year-old fossils. The technical comments published subsequently in Science, and comments published elsewhere, showed convincingly that these results were likely due to contamination or simply misinterpretation. Buckley et al (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18174420) show that the amino acids in the mass spec data appear to be modern. Pevzner et al. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18719266) explain that they may represent statistical artifacts. Others have also published results showing that the "soft tissue" reported by Schweitzer and colleagues here and elsewhere is consistent with a bacterial biofilm. These results have never been replicated by anyone other than the original authors. The prior likelihood of extant proteins or soft tissue in T. rex fossils is near zero, and the evidence supplied here is consistent with several other, far more likely interpretations. Nonetheless, these authors (but no others) have continued to publish papers asserting that they've found dinosaur peptides. Jcardazzi (talk) 11:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi

If research cannot be replicated and its results are a priori very improbable, this could be a good reason not to mention it because of WP:Undue weight. In this case, the importance of the studies, the publicity they generated and their having some plausibility demand that they should be part of the main text somewhere. Personally, I'd say they are not essential to the lead section. Perhaps it's good to point out that this article: San Antonio JD, Schweitzer MH, Jensen ST, Kalluri R, Buckley M, Orgel JPRO (2011) "Dinosaur Peptides Suggest Mechanisms of Protein Survival". PLoS ONE 6(6): e20381. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020381 claims that multiple labs in fact replicated such results. Professor Salzberg is very sceptical and it's always good to be critical. But he's not a paleontologist. He is using the word "pseudoscience" a lot but seems to forget that it is not very scientific to dogmatically reject empirical proof of the presence of original peptides in dinosaur bones. Those bones, after all, are the real test :o).--MWAK (talk) 16:33, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Morphology section ?

Could a morphology section be added? To expand on this elementary text (the elementary text is not sufficient to add) "Recent research indicates that bird-specific features, like feathers, began to appear before the evolution of birds, indicating that birds adapted pre-existing features to new uses, like flight. Other gradual changes like a more baby like skull shape into adulthood may have been important changes in the origin of birds. The features of birds evolved in a sequence; first bipedal locomotion, then feathers, then a wishbone, then more complex feathers, then wings. After these features existed then bird evolution was faster than dinosaur evolution."

Jcardazzi (talk) 16:18, 10 July 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi Thank you

In principle it could but it would largely amount to a duplication of information. These data are now thematically ordered. You could reorder them as a series of evolutionary changes but then you would lose the advantage of discussing each issue separately. Of course one might create a separate article for this and I agree that this would be useful. That is quite a challenge, however :o).--MWAK (talk) 04:59, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

References