Was Archie a vegetarian who foraged for berries like cardinals or finches?
Ancient origins and multiple appearances of carotenoid-pigmented feathers in birds
"...The broad palette of feather colours displayed by birds serves diverse biological functions, including communication and camouflage. Fossil feathers provide evidence that some avian colours, like black and brown melanins, have existed for at least 160 million years (Myr), but no traces of bright carotenoid pigments in ancient feathers have been reported." (Source)
Winter cardinals don their brightest red feathers
"...Cardinals get the pigments responsible for red feathers from their food. Cardinals, tanagers and goldfinches can't synthesize carotenoids - the pigments responsible for red, orange and yellow feathers. If the birds don't eat enough carotenoid-rich fruits and insects, feathers that grow in during the next molt will be less colorful. Dogwood, rose and Japanese honeysuckle berries are locally abundant sources of carotenoid pigments." (Source)
Any one wonders why creationists think pseudo-darwinists are lying about evolution? If they are whisked away with one example of science-fiction lies, what's to stop them from getting whisked away with another? Credibility... is in the trash can. Dr. Alan Feduccia was warning about this. Called it the "Meltdown of Paleontology."
Examples from the web:
Don't expect Creationists to accept any theories. The problem of credibility and accuracy is only getting worse. Facts matter. Accuracy matters. Fossil evidence matters. But in recent years, *religion* has infiltrated paleontology/science . . . where some jokers got this strange idea, "Well, as long as they reject God, who gives a damn if the feather pigments are wrong? Red is so much prettier anyway."
That's not Science, not even remotely. At least Science Fiction advertises itself by its right name.
That's Atheist religion, like a rotting ravenous cancer destroying Science with its war on God.
How to "Think Straight" by Neil deGrasse Tyson (and its not Atheism, that's for sure!)
" . . . They're like in your face atheist and they want to change policies and they're having debates. I don't have the time, the interest, the energy to do any of that. I'm a scientist. I'm an educator. My goal is to get people THINKING STRAIGHT in the first place, just get you to be curious about the natural world. That's what I'm about. I'm not about any of the rest of this."
The "God" issue and the atheist war on God, is of zero relevance to Science.
If the atheists had their meddling plucked out of the science arena . . . where it belongs, dumped in the trash can of Philosophy . . . and no longer allowed by the intellectuals to latch on to science for a lifeline to ill-gotten credibility to bolster their false religion . . . you'd see Atheists lose interest in Science, and seek out some other venues to pawn their religion on the masses.
Further evidence in paleontology and the fossil record that the "Red Feather on Dinosaurs and Ancient Birds" myth is complete fictional nonsense, though some ancient birds might have dined on insects --but where were the berries? :
- "no traces of bright carotenoid pigments in ancient feathers have been reported."
- "Cardinals, tanagers and goldfinches can't synthesize carotenoids - the pigments responsible for red, orange and yellow feathers... carotenoid-rich fruits and insects...Dogwood, rose and Japanese honeysuckle berries are locally abundant sources of carotenoid pigments." (Chances are these modern insects are getting their cartenoid-enrichment, by dining on local berries, just as the birds are.)
"Fleshy fruits are likely to have evolved from dry forms."
" . . . Although animal dispersal existed in gymnosperms and angiosperms before the Tertiary, dinosaurs were not frugivores and closed forest systems were not present, therefore providing little selection pressure on earlier production of fleshy fruits (Tiffney, 2004)."
(Source)
Frugivore definition, ". . .any chiefly fruit-eating organism, as certain bats."
Birds, co-existed with the dinosaurs. Are they saying birds didn't eat fruit back during Archie's day?
The timeline the information forces us to recognize as leading toward "fleshy fruit" development and birds consuming carteonoid-rich berries is all the way into the Tertiary . . .
Did fleshy fruit pulp evolve as a defense against seed loss rather than as a dispersal mechanism?
". . . The proposed sequence, defense before dispersal, may have occurred several times, from the early gymnosperms of the Carboniferous that had fleshy propagules (Retaltack and Dilcher 1988) through the Tertiary when the fleshy-fruited angiosperms radiated (Tiffney 1984). The fossil record cannot clearly reveal the evolutionary history of previous plant-animal interactions. However, existing fossil evidence is consistent with defense before dispersal. Fossil evidence does indicate that early plant reproductive structures suffered insect herbivory and these instances precede records of fleshy fruits or frugivory. The earliest Devonian seeds were small, naked and possibly polyphyletic in origin (Tiffney 1986a).
ANDREW L MACK Wildlife Conservation Society
Limited evidence indicates that sap-feeding arthropods existed in the early Devonian (Chaloner et al I991 ) and that insects fed on plant spores (Scott 1977; Chaloner et al !991), megaspores, and seeds (Smart and Hughes 1973; Scott and Taylor 1983) during the Carboniferous. Because of the higher nutrient value of seeds compared with foliage (Janzen l978a), it is likely early herbivores and pathogens would have fed upon undefended seeds whenever possible. Thus the early record indicates naked, potentially vulnerable and probably nutritious seeds at a time when herbivores were numerous.
Middle Pennsylvanian fossil seeds of many gymnosperms and seed ferns exhibit hard and thick sclerotestas (Tiffney 1986a), perhaps as defense against seed predators or desiccation. Progressing through the fossil record there are many instances of seeds being surrounded or partially enclosed in sterile tissues (Dilcher 1979) that could have served a defensive function. Some fossil genera (e.g., Carclaicarpm, Nucellcrqiwn) also exhibited a fleshy sarcotesta.
Perhaps these early fleshy sarcotestas contained deterrent compounds rather than rewards for seed dispersers. During the Permian, glossopterids dominated in Gondwana whereas Cordaitales were more numerous in Laurasia.
The upland Cordaitales mostly had winged seeds whereas lowland forms had thick-walled seeds. often with fleshy sarcotestas (Tiffney 1986a).
Some fossil evidence indicates herbivores consumed foliage, twigs and seeds indiscriminately and a late Permian coprolite contained seeds (Tiffney 1986a).
The Triassic witnessed the arrival of gingkoes, SplzerzoDcriern, fleshy-seeded cycads and Cn),tortin, though fossil seeds are rare. Reptiles are sometimes considered dispersers of these fruits (Pijl 1966), based on the assumption that fleshy tissues were rewards.
It is equally plausible that gingko pulp originated as a defense. The sole remaining gingko species (Girtkgo hilmhrr) has a foetid pulp that is unpalatable to most modern frugivores or herbivores. Gingkophytes, Coniferales, Nilssoniales. Caytoniales, Gnetales, cycads and Bennettitales radiated in the Mesozoic; many exhibit fructifications with mechanical defenses against herbivores (Weishampel 1984). In one case they have been found in coprolites (Hill 1976). Evidence suggests the prior existence of generalist herbivores consuming gymnosperm seeds with foliage (Tiffney 1986a) when the angiosperms radiated in the Cretaceous (Doyle 197X). The earliest angiosperm seeds were small and abiotically dispersed (Tiffney 1986a) shifting later to fleshy fruits. Some of the earliest fossil angiosperm fruits have glochids (Krassilov 1973), suggesting defense against seed predators. Fleshy-fruited angiosperms are rare in the Palaeocene fossil record (Collinson and Hooker 1991).
The gradual development of a relationship between putative frugivores and angiosperms until the mid-Cretaceous might have helped set the stage for rapid diversification of angiosperm and frugivore lineages once the interaction became mutually beneficial in the late Cretaceous and Tertiary. Fleming and Lips (1991) proposed that pterosaurs were one such group of frugivores in the Cretaceous. However, this does not necessarily imply a direct causal relationship between radiating plant and disperser lineages (Herrera 19X9a; Eriksson and Bremer 1992). Wing and Tiffney (1987) documented a shift from large generalist herbivores to smaller specialist herbivores,including frugivores and granivores, across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary."
(Source)
On 12/5/2015 5:30 PM, Feduccia, John A wrote:
Yes, the color arguments are pure mythology. here is what Philip Manning of U. Manchester said of the dino feather studies:
"Studies on the elucidation of colour in fossil feathers11–13 have suggested that the presence of melanosomes within fossil feathers may be used to tentatively to reconstruct feather colours by tracking variations in melanosome shape. Rod shapes were interpreted as eumelanosomes (dark black/brown) and spheroidal shapes as pheomelanosomes (reddish-brown).
This structural approach has some shortcomings, primarily that there is known diversity in melanin granule morphology among different species3,14 and melanosome preservation may not be uniform. Therefore, serious questions may be raised about colour interpretation based solely on fossilised melanosome morphology and distribution.11,12,15 Additionally, these studies did not account for other known contributors to colour in feathers, such as the possible presence of other pigments (e.g. carotenoids) or other physical structures.4"
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