288 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES!
If this welter of new bird fossils and anatomical characters seems a bit overwhelming,
your impression is correct: the past two decades have produced such an explosion of new
fossils and new ideas that everything we thought we knew about Mesozoic birds before
1990 is obsolete. Each year brings astonishing new specimens that further transform what
we thought we knew about avian evolution. Since the final picture is still taking shape, we
cannot tell how many more changes we’ll make in our cladograms of birds before the dis-
coveries start repeating themselves. But one thing is abundantly clear: we now have dozens
of beautiful transitions from dinosaurs to birds. The creationist books that focus only on
Archaeopteryx and distort the fossil record are so laughably outdated by the new discoveries
that their writings are only fit to line the bottom of a birdcage.
For Further Reading
Benton, M. J., ed. 1988. The Phylogeny and Classification of the Tetrapods.Vol. 1, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds.
Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.
Benton, M. J. 2014. Vertebrate Palaeontology. 4th ed. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. New York: Freeman.
Chiappe, L. M. 1995. The first 85 million years of avian evolution. Nature 378:349–355.
Chiappe, L. M., and G. J. Dyke 2002. The Mesozoic radiation of birds. Annual Review of Ecology and
Systematics 33:91–124.
Chiappe, L. M. and L. M. Witmer, eds. 2002. Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Chiappe, L. M., and Meng Qingjin. 2016. Birds of Stone: Chinese Avian Fossils from the Age of Dinosaurs.
Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Currie, P. J., E. B. Koppelhus, M. A. Shugar, and J. L. Wright, eds. 2004. Feathered Dragons: Studies on the
Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Dial, K. 2003. Wing-assisted incline running and the evolution of flight. Science 299:402–405.
Dingus, L., and T. Rowe. 1997. The Mistaken Extinction. New York: Freeman.
Dodson, P. 1996. The Horned Dinosaurs. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Fastovsky, D. E., and D. B. Weishampel. 2005. The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs. 2nd ed.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fastovsky, D. E. and D. B. Weishampel. 2016. Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History. 3rd ed. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Forster, C. A., S. D. Sampson, L. M. Chiappe, and D. W. Krause. 1998. The theropod ancestry of birds:
new evidence from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Science 279:1915–1919.
Gauthier, J. A. 1986. Saurischian monophyly and the origin of birds. California Academy of Sciences
Memoir 8:1–56.
Gauthier, J. A., and L. F. Gall, eds. 2001. New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Hou, L.-H. Z., Zhou, L. D. Martin, and A. Feduccia. 1995. A beaked bird from the Jurassic of China.
Nature 377:616–618.
Long, J., and H. Schouten. 2008. Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds. New York: Oxford University
Press.
McGowan, C. 1983. The Successful Dragons: A Natural History of Extinct Reptiles. Toronto: Stevens.
Naish, D., and P. Barrett. 2016. Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Books.
Norell, M. 2005. Unearthing Dragons: The Great Feathered Dinosaur Discoveries. New York: Pi.
Norman, D. 1985. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. New York: Crescent.