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Did some dinosaurs evolve from birds?

John Ruben, who is professor at Oregon State University, has recently made some comments to question whether some raptors have actually evolved from birds, instead of the usual claim that birds evolved from dinosaurs. He makes his comments in a paper published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ruben believes that some bird-like dinosaurs such as Velociraptor may have actually been more closely linked to birds than to dinosaurs. Ruben comments;

"Raptors look quite a bit like dinosaurs but they have much more in common with birds than they do with other theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus…We think the evidence is finally showing that these animals, which are usually considered dinosaurs, were actually descended from birds, not the other way around."

Ruben himself believes that birds evolved from a gliding reptile in an earlier epoch. However, he believes that the dogma of the standard evolutionary model is breaking down.

"We're finally breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with…This issue isn't resolved at all. There are just too many inconsistencies with the idea that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that."

He further observes that fossils keep popping up that do not fit with the standard model. He comments;

"Pesky new fossils...sharply at odds with conventional wisdom never seem to cease popping up. Given the vagaries of the fossil record, current notions of near resolution of many of the most basic questions about long-extinct forms should probably be regarded with caution."

So how does CSM interpret this new line of evidence? We have previously reported on the claimed theropod to bird evolution on this website and in our journal (See list below). We have reported that some ornithologists such Fedducia have argued that some supposed theropod dinosaurs are really flightless birds. We suspect that the picture is complex and that there may be some adaptation from flying birds to flightless ones in the fossil record. But we do not believe that birds have evolved from dinosaurs or gliding reptiles in the Jurassic or Triassic, but the evidence is now overwhelming that birds and theropods are found side by side in the same early cretaceous layers. It is simply not sustainable to assert that birds evolved from theropods in that period (or any other). We believe that God created various kinds of animals that are distinct and separate in themselves.

References and sources

See: Jennifer Viegas, Some 'Dinosaurs' Evolved from Birds?, Discovery News, 17th February 2010 http://news.discovery.com/dinosaurs/some-dinosaurs-evolved-from-birds.html

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This message was added on Thursday 11th March 2010