Birds Under Fire

A photograph of the Sinosauropteryx fossil. Photo credit: AP/Wide World Photos

The claim that birds evolved from dinosaurs is widely accepted by secular scientists and in popular culture.

Yet some of their popular conceptions are coming under fire.

Sinosauropteryx, originally claimed to have been covered in “primitive feathers,” may not have had feathers at all:

“The fibers show a striking similarity to the structure and levels of organization of dermal collagen,” the kind of tough elastic strands found on the skin of sharks and reptiles today, the investigators say.1

In other words, the “protofeathers” in Sinosauropteryx may not be protofeathers at all, but frayed collagen fibers from underneath the skin.

Because this fossil was a supposed link between dinosaurs and birds, there is still a big gap to fill. The proto-feather belief just doesn’t fly.