12 Dinosaurs Evolve—and Fly
Dinosaur Transitions
Long, long before you and I were born, there were dinosaurs all over the earth, except
in New Zealand. Dinosaurs lived and loved in the Mesozoic Era, or Age of Reptiles,
which began 200,000,000 years ago and lasted until 60,000,000 years ago. (There are
people who know these things. Does that satisfy you?). . . . The brain of a dinosaur
was only about the size of a nut, and some think that is why they became extinct. That
can’t be the reason, though, for I know plenty of animals who get by with less. . . . The
Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake
in the first place.
—Will Cuppy, How to Become ExtinctDinosaurs are big business these days, with millions of dollars of merchandise featur-
ing their likenesses, four of the highest-grossing movies ever made (the Jurassic Park-Jurassic
World series), and dozens of documentaries on cable television. Almost every kid between
ages 4 and 12 is fascinated with them. Most of the public knows or cares nothing about
prehistoric life except for the dinosaurs, and many use the word “dinosaur” for any extinct
beast (including prehistoric mammals and many other creatures not even remotely related
to dinosaurs). Some people still have the Flintstones or the comic strip B.C. as their mental
image for prehistory and believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. With the exception
of the birds (fig. 12.1), which are dinosaurs (as we shall soon prove), all the rest of the non-
bird (“nonavian”) dinosaurs were extinct by 66 million years ago, and our own family did
not appear until 5–7 million years ago, so at least 58 million years separate nonbird dinosaurs
and humans. Some creationists have tried to perpetuate this myth by claiming that there are
human tracks mixed with dinosaur tracks in the Paluxy River bed in Texas, but that has
been debunked by creationists themselves, and most of them consider it an embarrassment
(Morris 1986; see Glen Kuban’s review at paleo.cc/paluxy/sor-ipub.htm).
Nevertheless, creationists know that the public only cares about dinosaur and human
evolution, so they feel obligated to trot out examples of cool-looking dinosaurs in their books
and debates and at the “Creation Museum” in Kentucky, and then claim that there are no
transitional forms for any dinosaur. Not only is this a blatant lie, but it shows that they have
not done the least bit of homework, for even the kiddie books about dinosaurs illustrate
many transitional forms and primitive members of the major families.
Considering how rare dinosaur fossils are (especially in comparison to the marine inver-
tebrates we discussed in chapter 8), it is remarkable that we have any transitional dinosaur
fossils at all. But enough specimens are preserved to show that we now have the transitions
between nearly every major group of dinosaurs, plus many other remarkable fossils that
show other types of transitions, such as carnivorous dinosaurs becoming herbivorous.