ORIGIN OF BIRDS AND MAMMALS

According to the theory of evolution, life originated and evolved in the sea and then was transported onto land by amphibians. This evolutionary scenario also suggests that amphibians evolved into reptiles, creatures living only on land. This scenario is again implausible, due to the enormous structural differences between these two classes of animals. For instance, the amphibian egg is designed for developing in water whereas the amniotic egg is designed for developing on land. A "step by step" evolution of an amphibian is out of the question, because without a perfect and fully-designed egg, it is not possible for a species to survive. Moreover, as usual, there is no evidence of transitional forms that were supposed to link amphibians with reptiles. Evolutionist paleontologist and an authority on vertebrate paleontology, Robert L. Carroll has to accept that "the early reptiles were very different from amphibians and that their ancestors could not be found yet."44

Yet the hopelessly doomed scenarios of the evolutionists are not over yet. There still remains the problem of making these creatures fly! Since evolutionists believe that birds must somehow have been evolved, they assert that they were transformed from reptiles. However, none of the distinct mechanisms of birds, which have a completely different structure from land-dwelling animals, can be explained by gradual evolution. First of all, the wings, which are the exceptional traits of birds, are a great impasse for the evolutionists. One of the Turkish evolutionists, Engin Korur, confesses the impossibility of the evolution of wings:

The common trait of the eyes and the wings is that they can only function if they are fully developed. In other words, a halfway-developed eye cannot see; a bird with half-formed wings cannot fly. How these organs came into being has remained one of the mysteries of nature that needs to be enlightened.45

The question of how the perfect structure of wings came into being as a result of consecutive haphazard mutations remains completely unanswered. There is no way to explain how the front arms of a reptile could have changed into perfectly functioning wings as a result of a distortion in its genes (mutation).

Moreover, just having wings is not sufficient for a land organism to fly. Land-dwelling organisms are devoid of many other structural mechanisms that birds use for flying. For example, the bones of birds are much lighter than those of land-dwelling organisms. Their lungs function in a very different way. They have a different muscular and skeletal system and a very specialised heart-circulatory system. These features are pre-requisites of flying needed at least as much as wings. All these mechanisms had to exist at the same time and altogether; they could not have formed gradually by being "accumulated". This is why the theory asserting that land organisms evolved into aerial organisms is completely fallacious.

All of these bring another question to the mind: even if we suppose this impossible story to be true, then why are the evolutionists unable to find any "half-winged" or "single-winged" fossils to back up their story?

Another Alleged Transitional Form: Archæopteryx Evolutionists pronounce the name of one single creature in response. This is the fossil of a bird called Archæopteryx, one of the most widely-known so-called transitional forms among the very few that evolutionists still defend. Archæopteryx, the so-called ancestor of modern birds according to evolutionists, lived approximately 150 million years ago. The theory holds that some small dinosaurs, such as Velociraptors or Dromeosaurs, evolved by acquiring wings and then starting to fly. Thus, Archæopteryx is assumed to be a transitional form that branched off from its dinosaur ancestors and started to fly for the first time.

SPECIAL LUNGS FOR BIRDS The anatomy of birds is very different from that of reptiles, their supposed ancestors. Bird lungs function in a totally different way from those of land-dwelling animals. Land-dwelling animals breathe in and out from the same air vessel. In birds, while the air enters into the lung from the front, it goes out from the back. God created This this distinct system "design" is specially made for birds, which need great amounts of oxygen during flight. It is impossible for such a structure to evolve from the reptile lung.

However, the latest studies of Archæopteryx fossils indicate that this creature is absolutely not a transitional form, but an extinct species of bird, having some insignificant differences from modern birds.

The thesis that Archæopteryx was a "half-bird" that could not fly perfectly was popular among evolutionist circles until not long ago. The absence of a sternum (breastbone) in this creature was held up as the most important evidence that this bird could not fly properly. (The sternum is a bone found under the thorax to which the muscles required for flight are attached. In our day, this breastbone is observed in all flying and non-flying birds, and even in bats, a flying mammal which belongs to a very different family.)

However, the seventh Archæopteryx fossil, which was found in 1992, caused great astonishment among evolutionists. The reason was that in this recently discovered fossil, the breastbone that was long assumed by evolutionists to be missing was discovered to have existed after all. This fossil was described in Nature magazine as follows:

The recently discovered seventh specimen of the  Archæopteryx preserves a partial, rectangular sternum, long suspected but never previously documented. This attests to its strong flight muscles.46

This discovery invalidated the mainstay of the claims that Archæopteryx was a half-bird that could not fly properly.

Moreover, the structure of the bird's feathers became one of the most important pieces of evidence confirming that Archæopteryx was a flying bird in the real sense. The asymmetric feather structure of Archæopteryx is indistinguishable from that of modern birds, and indicates that it could fly perfectly well. As the eminent paleontologist Carl O. Dunbar states, "because of its feathers [Archæopteryx is] distinctly to be classed as a bird."47

Another fact that was revealed by the structure of Archæopteryx's feathers was its warm-blooded metabolism. As was discussed above, reptiles and dinosaurs are cold-blooded animals whose body heat fluctuates with the temperature of their environment, rather than being homeostatically regulated. A very important function of the feathers on birds is the maintenance of a constant body temperature. The fact that Archæopteryx had feathers showed that it was a real, warm-blooded bird that needed to regulate its body heat, in contrast to dinosaurs.

Speculations of Evolutionists: The Teeth and Claws of Archæopteryx Two important points evolutionist biologists rely on when claiming Archæopteryx was a transitional form, are the claws on its wings and its teeth.

It is true that Archæopteryx had claws on its wings and teeth in its mouth, but these traits do not imply that the creature bore any kind of relationship to reptiles. Besides, two bird species living today, Taouraco and Hoatzin, have claws which allow them to hold onto branches. These creatures are fully birds, with no reptilian characteristics. That is why it is completely groundless to assert that Archæopteryx is a transitional form just because of the claws on its wings.

Neither do the teeth in Archæopteryx's beak imply that it is a transitional form. Evolutionists make a purposeful trickery by saying that these teeth are reptile characteristics, since teeth are not a typical feature of reptiles. Today, some reptiles have teeth while others do not. Moreover, Archæopteryx is not the only bird species to possess teeth. It is true that there are no toothed birds in existence today, but when we look at the fossil record, we see that both during the time of Archæopteryx and afterwards, and even until fairly recently, a distinct bird genus existed that could be categorised as "birds with teeth".

The most important point is that the tooth structure of Archæopteryx and other birds with teeth is totally different from that of their alleged ancestors, the dinosaurs. The well-known ornithologists L. D. Martin, J. D. Steward, and K. N. Whetstone observed that Archæopteryx and other similar birds have teeth with flat-topped surfaces and large roots. Yet the teeth of theropod dinosaurs, the alleged ancestors of these birds, are protuberant like saws and have narrow roots.48

These researchers also compared the wrist bones of Archæopteryx and their alleged ancestors, the dinosaurs, and observed no similarity between them.49

Studies by anatomists like S. Tarsitano, M. K. Hecht, and A.D. Walker have revealed that some of the similarities that John Ostrom and other have seen between Archæopteryx and dinosaurs were in reality misinterpretations.50

All these findings indicate that Archæopteryx was not a transitional link but only a bird that fell into a category that can be called "toothed birds".

Archæopteryx and Other Ancient Bird Fossils

While evolutionists have for decades been proclaiming Archæopteryx to be the greatest evidence for their scenario concerning the evolution of birds, some recently-found fossils invalidate that scenario in other respects.

Lianhai Hou and Zhonghe Zhou, two paleontologists at the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology, discovered a new bird fossil in 1995, and named it Confuciusornis. This fossil is almost the same age as Archæopteryx (around 140 million years), but has no teeth in its mouth. In addition, its beak and feathers shared the same features as today's birds. Confuciusornis has the same skeletal structure as modern birds, but also has claws on its wings, just like Archæopteryx. Another structure peculiar to birds called the "pygostyle", which supports the tail feathers, was also found in Confuciusornis. In short, this fossil-which is the same age as Archæopteryx, which was previously thought to be the earliest bird and was accepted as a semi-reptile-looks very much like a modern bird. This fact has invalidated all the evolutionist theses claiming Archæopteryx to be the primitive ancestor of all birds.51

Another fossil unearthed in China, caused even greater confusion. In November 1996, the existence of a 130-million-year-old bird named Liaoningornis was announced in Science by L. Hou, L. D. Martin, and Alan Feduccia. Liaoningornis had a breastbone to which the muscles for flight were attached, just as in modern birds. This bird was indistinguishable from modern birds also in other respects, too. The only difference was the teeth in its mouth. This showed that birds with teeth did not possess the primitive structure alleged by evolutionists.52 This was stated in an article in Discover "Whence came the birds? This fossil suggests that it was not from dinasour stock".53

Another fossil that refuted the evolutionist claims regarding Archæopteryx was Eoalulavis. The wing structure of Eoalulavis, which was said to be some 25 to 30 million years younger than Archæopteryx, was also observed in modern slow-flying birds. This proved that 120 million years ago, there were birds indistinguishable from modern birds in many respects flying in the skies.54

These facts once more indicate for certain that neither Archæopteryx nor other ancient birds similar to it were transitional forms. The fossils do not indicate that different bird species evolved from each other. On the contrary, the fossil record proves that today's modern birds and some archaic birds such as Archæopteryx actually lived together at the same time. Some of these bird species, such as Archæopteryx and Confuciusornis, have become extinct, and only some of the species that once existed have been able to survive down to the present day.

In brief, several features of Archæopteryx indicate that this creature was not a transitional form. The overall anatomy of Archæopteryx imply stasis, not evolution. Paleontologist Robert Carroll has to admit that:

The geometry of the flight feathers of  Archæopteryx is identical with that of modern flying birds, whereas nonflying birds have symmetrical feathers. The way in which the feathers are arranged on the wing also falls within the range of modern birds… According to Van Tyne and Berger, the relative size and shape of the wing of  Archæopteryx are similar to that of birds that move through restricted openings in vegetation, such as gallinaceous birds, doves, woodcocks, woodpeckers, and most passerine birds… The flight feathers have been in stasis for at least 150 million years…55

On the other hand, the "temporal paradox" is one of the facts that deal the fatal blow to the evolutionist allegations about Archæopteryx. In his book Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells remarks that Archæopteryx has been turned into an "icon" of the theory of evolution, whereas evidence clearly shows that this creature is not the primitive ancestor of birds. According to Wells, one of the indications of this is that theropod dinosaurs—the alleged ancestors of Archæopteryx—are actually younger than Archæopteryx:

Two-legged reptiles that ran along the ground, and had other features one might expect in an ancestor of Archæopteryx, appear later.56

44 Robert L. Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1988, p. 198.
45 Engin Korur, "Gözlerin ve Kanatlarýn Sýrrý" (The Mystery of the Eyes and the Wings), Bilim ve Teknik, No. 203, October 1984, p. 25.
46 Nature, Vol 382, August, 1, 1996, p. 401.
47 Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1961, p. 310.
48 L. D. Martin, J. D. Stewart, K. N. Whetstone, The Auk, Vol 98, 1980, p. 86.
49 Ibid, p. 86; L. D. Martin "Origins of Higher Groups of Tetrapods", Ithaca, New York: Comstock Publising Association, 1991, pp. 485, 540.
50 S. Tarsitano, M. K. Hecht, Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society, Vol 69, 1985, p. 178; A. D. Walker, Geological Magazine, Vol 177, 1980, p. 595.
51 Pat Shipman, "Birds do it... Did Dinosaurs?", New Scientist, February 1, 1997, p. 31.
52"Old Bird", Discover, March 21, 1997.
53 Ibid.
54 Pat Shipman, "Birds Do It... Did Dinosaurs?", p. 28.
55 Robert L. Carroll, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 280-81.