Bird Footprints 60 Million Years Before Birds Evolved?

In the evolutionary worldview, birds evolved from dinosaurs—first emerging around 150 million years ago, according to an evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record. But evolutionists have a problem—a set of footprints that are “nearly indistinguishable” from fossil and modern bird footprints and yet are a supposed 60 million years older than birds!

To help solve this evolutionary puzzle, and to ensure the footprints really are “birdlike,” the researchers used a new AI model to analyze and categorize the footprints. This AI is designed to be “a mathematical unbiased point of view . . . to assist human experts [in] interpreting the data.” And what did this unbiased AI conclude? After analyzing 2,000 dinosaur tracks, it concluded these “ambiguous” ones resembled those from . . . birds!

Those ambiguous cases proved the most revealing. Several three-toed footprints more than 200 million years old clustered with fossil and modern birds rather than with non-avian dinosaurs. If true birds made those tracks, they would push the origin of birds tens of millions of years earlier than the oldest known bird skeletons.

The results may show that some early dinosaurs had feet or modes of walking that closely resembled those of birds, producing nearly indistinguishable tracks long before birds evolved. Either way, the findings suggest that the transition toward bird-like feet began earlier and more gradually than the body fossil record alone indicates.

Because evolution is a worldview based on man’s fallible beliefs, it’s so plastic, evolutionists can change their ideas to fit anything they find!

Note their response to this very unexpected (according to the evolutionary story) result—it’s never to question their evolutionary assumptions! Rather, they assume that early dinosaurs must’ve just walked like birds or that birds evolved earlier than they’d thought (and that’s no small tweak—that calls for a rewrite of how birds must’ve evolved). But because evolution is a worldview based on man’s fallible beliefs, it’s so plastic, evolutionists can change their ideas to fit anything they find!

Joel Leineweber, our VP of design and a paleoartist, put out a short video on this new study and what it means for the creation-evolution debate. You can watch it below, and be sure to follow @joelpaleoart on Instagram for more videos like this.

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A post shared by Joel Leineweber (@joelpaleoart)

I thought today was a good day to share this study with you because today is the 12-year anniversary of my debate with Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” at the Creation Museum. That debate has been viewed by millions of people, and I still hear—over a decade later—stories of people who were impacted by the truth that I shared. Well, it’s ironic that just before this anniversary, I saw a news story about an “out-of-order” fossil because, when asked if he would give up his naturalistic assumptions, Mr. Nye responded with,

That’s why I say, if you can find a fossil that has swum between the layers, bring it on. You would change the world.

Well, such fossils have been found . . . over and over again! This is just another example. And it doesn’t “change the world,” because evolutionists simply rework their model to accommodate the new evidence, no matter how unexpected. The issue isn’t the evidence. It never has been! The issue is a battle between two worldviews—and two interpretations of the evidence—because of two different starting points (God’s Word or man’s word) and hard hearts that don’t want to accept the truth of God’s Word.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.