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Dear Colleagues, This enquiry was sent by Brent Betitt (bbetitt@yahoo.com), a student in Amsterdam, to me, a nonspecialist in fossil birds. I imagine he is not a list member so could I please ask you to copy any messages to him directly as well as to the list. Many thanks indeed, Martin. -------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Dr Head, I am a student in the field of biology in Amsterdam. We have debates with creationists and there are some points put forth by creationists that I could not find sufficient information to answer explicitly. So I am kindly asking you to refer to your in-depth knowledge of science to guide me answer the below mentioned questions brought up by creationists. 1. The 150 million year-old bird fossil Archaeopteryx, a transitional form between reptiles and birds, has teeth in its mouth and claws on its wings. There are living birds in our day that have similar claws on its wings. So can we say that these characteristics of Archaeopteryx show that it is a transitional form, between reptiles and birds? 2. Are there any perfect bird fossils preceding Archaeopteryx? The recently found fossil called Longisquama has all the features of a flying bird though it is 70 million older than Archaeopteryx. Does this finding refute the hypothesis that Archaeopteryx is the primitive ancestor of the birds? Please kindly inform which museums these transitional forms are displayed. I thank you in advance for your valuable comments, Yours faithfully, Brent Betitt bbetitt@yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin J. Head Senior Research Associate, and Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research Department of Geography University of Cambridge Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN ENGLAND, U.K. Phone: (01223) 339751 Fax: (01223) 333392 Email: mh300@cam.ac.uk Home page: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~mh300 ======================================================================
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