Tiny Mongolian Dinosaur Wreaks Havoc

A tiny Mongolian dinosaur is wreaking havoc on evolutionists’ traditional ideas of how flight (and birds) evolved. A North Carolina State University press release, adapted by ScienceDaily, describes the work of researchers led by Julia Clarke, assistant professor of paleontology at N.C. State.

When studying the newly discovered, tiny dinosaur species Mahakala omnogovae and comparing it to “other small meat-eating dinosaurs including birds,” the team found that small size had “evolved well before the ability to fly.” Not only that, but the representatives in each dinosaur lineage “did not get uniformly smaller as time went on,” as previously thought; instead, some dinosaur lineages saw their size triple. The press release explains how this causes a problem:

If miniaturization of dinosaurs occurred well before the origin of flight, then this raises other questions about the ways that paleontologists have traditionally explained trends in the early history of birds. [...] “Now we see that small size occurs well before many other innovations in locomotion and growth strategy. It forces us to look at the ways we were explaining trends within this part of Dinosauria, and to question our previous assumptions.”

Of course, one key assumption is that birds evolved from dinosaurs!

Of course, one key assumption is that birds evolved from dinosaurs! But not having anywhere else to turn to to explain the origin of birds, evolutionists will continue to promote the dino–bird link, even when forced to rewrite the story of how birds actually evolved (or when, or where, or why, etc.).