Problems with Evaluating Fossil Relationships
Nature v. 431, 9 Sept. '04, p. 145, "Parental care in an ornithischian dinosaur" by Qingjin Meng et al. has a picture of a mass of fossilized baby dinosaur skeletons and part of an adult of the same species.
The text ties it to the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but it has to do so in a sort of round-about manner. It starts by pointing out that "Crocodilians...show extensive parental care of their young" just as birds do, "but whether this behaviour evolved independently in these two groups of living archosaurs is unknown." As it says in the concluding paragraph, "given the disparity in ecology and physiology between crocodilians and birds, homology of their parental care is debatable."
Here we see peeping out at us the fundamental problem of arguing for evolution on the basis of the fossil record -- no matter what similarities we may find between various fossils, no matter what order they are in, we can never say the similarities show an evolutionary relationship with anything like the confidence level of what I consider real science -- repeated, controlled, direct observations and experiments.
The dinosaur in this case is an ornithischian named Psittacosaurus. "Ornithischian" means "bird-hipped," and I'm pretty sure Psittacosaurus means "parrot-lizard," so named because at least one specimen retained a tough, downward-curved beak. Interestingly, neither of those observations means this dinosaur is especially linked to birds.
Birds are thought to have evolved from saurischian or lizard-hipped dinosaurs -- the hips supposedly became bird-hips along with the rest of the dinosaur. So both the bird-like feature of the hips and the beak of this species of dinosaur are considered merely cases of "convergent evolution" -- similarities that even evolutionists do not chalk up to evolutionary relationship.
So why shouldn't the apparent nesting/parental care behavior seen here also be considered further evidence of the unreliability of judging evolutionary development from the evidence of similarities (homology)?
It's also another case of fossils being preserved by flooding, consistent with the YEC position that almost all fossils were formed in the Flood or possibly related events just before and after. "The lack of disarticulation, weathering, scavenging or other disturbance indicates minimal subaerial exposure.
The consistently lifelike postures and skulls free of overlapping skeletons rule out significant transport and suggest that the Psittacosaurus were rapidly entombed while still alive. Death scenarios might include burial by volcanic debris, entrapment in a collapsed underground burrow, or flooding of a nest or other surface excavation."
Until Next Time,
David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.
http://home.att.net/~david.bump
