This is a semi technical discussion from a Creationist perspective. You might be interested in how Creationists look at this celebrated, supposedly dramatic transitional.
New four-winged feathered dinosaur?
As a palaeontologist, I'm pretty disappointed with this article for a number of reasons. The first is that it completely misrepresents the significance of the find. I'll address the four points made in their summary...
The dubious nature of the evidence itself, since it all comes from the same area as the Archaeoraptor hoax, and the first named ‘Microraptor’ was actually part of this.
The "Archaeoraptor" hoax was assembled by local farmers and revealed by palaeontologists upon closer inspection. The back half of the specimen, described as
Microraptor, matches other fully-articulated, feathered specimens assignable to that species. Trying to imply that all bird-like fossils to come out of China are hoaxes on the basis of a single isolated occurrence is just dishonest.
The ‘dates’ are the opposite of what evolution would predict, because M. gui is a lot ‘younger’ than undoubted birds, even ones with beaks.
But nobody is claiming that
Microraptor gave rise to later birds. It is simply being billed as an example of experimental flight patterns in early avian evolution, given its interesting flight adaptations (4 "wings") and close morphological relationship to birds.
Microraptor is a "transitional fossil" in the broad sense of the word because it exhibits both avian (e.g., feathers, retroverted hip bones, hollow bones) and dinosaurian (e.g., bony tail, clawed fingers, teeth) characteristics.
This latest discovery would refute the dominant paradigm of the cursorial theory.
So what? The idea that birds evolved in trees or on the ground is a debate that has been raging for decades. The preference of many scientists for one theory over another -- based on nothing more than conjecture, mind you -- means nothing for the theory of evolution. The great thing about this fossil is that it allows us to put the argument to bed -- it seems birds evolved from small, tree-dwelling theropods.
The imagined transitions from land animal to parachutist to glider to powered flier would each have required substantial new genetic information to have arisen.
Ah, the classic creationist "new information" argument. We've belabored this issue before, and suffice it to say, it's a non-issue until the evolution-deniers can define what they mean by "information."
(And incidentally, it was discovered recently that half a wing CAN be useful:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5605/402)
For something a little more detailed and, in my opinion, very insightful try browsing this discussion of the problems with the actual transition:
shernren's link says it all. Yes, recent finds have shown (as predicted) that we can even observe the evolution of bird-like lungs in theropod dinosaurs. The study you are citing is out of date. And even if Ruben's study were accurate, the implications are still damning for creationists. Reptilian hepatic lungs + avian air sacs = transitional character state! Regardless, you can read the reaction of several palaeontologists to Ruben et al.'s initial study here:
http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/misc/lungs.html
Lastly, I just want to say how surprised I am (though I probably shouldn't be) that creationists are citing the arguments Alan Feduccia in order to deny evolution. Feduccia is an evolutionist himself! The only thing different about him is the fact that he thinks that instead of evolving from something like this...
... birds evolved from something like this...
Suffice it to say that nearly everyone in the palaeo business think he's a kook with his blinders on. He has certainly provided
no morphological evidence beyond the superficially feather-like structures of
Longisquama (above) linking birds to these enigmatic creatures. In fact, at one time he used to argue that the feathered raptor dinosaurs coming out of China did not preserve feathers at all, but instead muscle fibers. And since his hypothesis has been so thoroughly refuted with more recent findings, he's taken to denying the dinosaurian relationships of all classic raptor dinosaurs, including
Velociraptor,
Deinonychus, and
Troodon.
The guy's a laughing stock and I think it's fitting that evolution-deniers should be citing his "work."
