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They are thought to be encased in amber for several million years - do you think they might lose a bit of 'fluffiness'?

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The facts are we don't know what kind of creature they came from - they are just feathers in isolation.

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Not really. Amber is like molten glass—it prevents oxygen from reaching whatever’s caught inside it, so as long as the object remains encased in amber, it’s unable to decompose the way it normally would.

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That’s right, we don’t. But the mere fact that contour feathers without barbules have existed is something predicted by evolution and no other theory.

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When I was debating with Bettawrekonize, he was unable to provide an example of a specific anatomical structure whose existence was predicted by creationism and no other theory, and which went on to be found. I’ve provided three of them in the case of evolution: the feathers and “proto-wings” found on dromaeosaurids which had been predicted by Gregory Paul; the leg-wings on Microraptor gui which had been predicted by William Beebe; and the contour feathers without barbules which have been predicted by several paleontologists. (Although the article about this discovery isn’t specific about who predicted their existence, I’ve seen Mark Norell and Phil Currie hypothesize this as early as 2002.)

If creationism is true and evolution is false, there should be even more examples of specific anatomical structures predicted only by creationism than there are for evolution. Can you provide any?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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The objective evidence for the classification (phylogeny) of birds comes primarily from cladistic studies these days, which are based on evidence and objective distinctions, and there are numerous published papers on the subject. Probably the classic paper in the field is:

Gauthier, J., 1986. Saurischian monophyly and the origin of birds. In: K. Padian, ed. The Origin of Birds and the Evolution of Flight. Memoirs California Academy of Sciences 8. pp. 1–55

which I couldn't find online. A more recent overview is:

Senter, P., 2007. A NEW LOOK AT THE PHYLOGENY OF COELUROSAURIA (DINOSAURIA: THEROPODA), Journal of Systematic Palaeontology (2007), 5: 429-463 (abstract)

The Wikipedia link I posted above provides much more information on this topic.

Yes, I am familiar with the first paper which came up as a product of a discussion in my ornithology studies some years ago. The problem with most of these studies is that they are based on fairly fragmentary fossil evidence which require significant amounts of subjective determination, which if often greatly affected by the theoretical presumptions of the investigator in question.

Indeed, the debate about dinosaur feathers is still somewhat contested, and again often the product of interpretation and over-arching presumptions. The most reliable determiner of course, that being genetic comparison, is virtually non-existent in this case.

Personally, it is no skin off my nose if dinosaurs and birds do indeed form a group – indeed this may be likely. But I find again, that unlike my evolutionary counterparts, I am the actual skeptic in the discussion, and unwilling to accept blindly whatever is handed to me.

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But it also flows over the objects in question, and down feathers are among the most fragile of organic structures. You are actually saying that amber doesn't have sufficient weight to flatten a down feather against whatever surfcae it was flowing over?

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First off, they look nothing like 'contour feathers' - they look like typical down feathers. Secondly, evolution never 'predicted' the specific nature of contour feathers. Thirdly, again, the idea that these came from something other than a bird is pure assumption.

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In my mind it really has nothing to do with 'creationism', it has to do with not allowing one's presumptions cloud one's judgment, and I think this is just one of many cases where the presumption of evolution causes people to see things not in evidence.

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When something is being caught in a liquid, the liquid normally doesn’t flatten what’s underneath it, because the object simply becomes immersed in the liquid. If what you’re saying is right, then the same thing would be seen happening to insects that get caught in amber in the present. Why doesn’t the weight of amber flatten the wings of every insect that gets caught in it? The reason is that liquids simply don’t work this way.

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Your second and third point are irrelevant, since the only thing that matters is that evolution predicted these existence of these structures at all. The fact that the structure of normal contour feathers was known before Darwin’s time has no effect on that, and neither does the fact that we can’t identify the exact animal this came from.

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As for your first point, you need to look again at the image I linked to. Compare the two images on the left to the four on the right, especially the lower two. See how the central rachis is curved, and the barbs only branch out in directions perpendicular to the curve? Down feathers are fluffy, with the barbs not restricted to a single plane like this. The structure of the feather shown in this picture is one only exists in contour feathers, although modern contour feathers differ in that they have barbules also.

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I see that you’re starting to just evade my point now. Presumptions have nothing to do with this. It’s only a matter of which theory makes predictions that turn out to be correct and which one doesn’t, which is something that’s the same regardless of what presumptions you have. If you continue to evade my point and bring up irrelevant things the way Bettawrekonize was doing, you’ll only make it all the more obvious that you can’t provide the same thing for creationism that I’m providing for evolution. Why don’t you just admit it?

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Indeed, take a bit of down and get it wet – it immediately losses it’s fluffiness.
The reason it wouldn’t flatten insects is simple; insects have a stiff exoskeleton.

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Actually, I looked at the images several days ago when they were first posted elsewhere. The longest feather is 2.3 millimeters long, and as the author of the paper notes, “These feathers are morphologically close to the down, ornamental or afterfeathers, and not to the contour, remiges or rectrices”. That seems to be the most logical conclusion, particularly as modern feathers are already known to exist at the point in history in which the feathers originated.

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So despite the fact there is no actual evolutionary prediction concerning these feathers, there is no evidence linking it to a dinosaur, and the feathers actually resemble modern feathers of a kind we can observe, it still proves your point.

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No, I am not evading your point, I have substantively addressed the actual evidence, it's just that as someone who isn’t a creationist, I feel little compulsion to defend a creationist point of view.

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It loses its fluffiness when you take it out of the water. Take a piece of down, immerse it in a glass of water, and leave it floating there. The down doesn’t get flattened while it’s suspended in the water, does it? Why should amber be any different than that? It’s a liquid that became solid while it had an object suspended in it.

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And I’m not talking about the bodies of insects, I’m just talking about their wings, which are fairly fragile also. The weight of amber would certainly be enough to flatten them, if it weren’t for the behavior of liquids I just mentioned.

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EDIT: There’s something else I don’t understand about the point you’re making here. If you’re right that amber would flatten any feather that gets caught in it, how would it be possible to find something like this fossil at all? Suppose that these feathers are exactly whatever you think they are; that they’re from a modern bird that lived sometime within the past six thousand years. Even in that case, doesn’t the fact that they were preserved in this manner show that amber is capable of preserving feathers this way?

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I’m going to address your next points in an order other than the one you made them, since it’s clearer that way.

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I assume you got this article from here. Why don’t you quote the entire relevant part of the article, rather than selectively quoting the part that supports your point and leaving out the part that doesn’t? Here’s the entire quote that was posted there:

"These feathers are morphologically close to the down, ornamental or afterfeathers, and not to the contour, remiges or rectrices. However, they have a thick and long rachis, unlike classical down feathers whose barbs generally diverge from the very short apex of the rachis."

The second part is part of the quote is part of the same thing I was describing, which makes these feathers unlike any modern down feathers that had been known to exist. Even the authors of this “intelligent design” article are acknowledging this. Why aren’t you?

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You’re not a creationist? You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t accept evolution. If you’re not a creationist, what are you?

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I have no problem with amber preserving feathers or anything else for that manner; obviously it not only can, but has.

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Actually, as I pointed out the quote was not at all out of context, but the basis for the same conclusion that the authors of that article reached, that they could certainly be chick down.
And the problem I have with presumed evolutionary ‘predictions’ is that they are vague, subject to interpretation, and depending on the particular evolutionist giving them, often contradictory. They rarely rise to specificity one requires for predictions in other fields.

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That being said, so far such a prediction seems to reside only in your memory.

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When one considers again the major points on the whole – the existence of modern feathers at the time these feathers were observed, not knowing what sort of creature these feathers came from

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Then why were you arguing about whether or not amber is capable of preserving feathers in this manner? Were you just trying to waste my time?

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It can’t be normal down from a chick, because normal down doesn’t have this structure. “Morphologically close” doesn’t mean it’s the same. Primitive birds are morphologically close to dinosaurs, as I assume you’re aware from my explanations in Raptorman’s thread, but I’m sure you wouldn’t agree that the two are related.

There’s no way to disprove the second idea, that the structures of these feathers are the result of a dead-end mutation that only occurred in a small group of animals (the term “degenerate” is biologically meaningless, but I assume that’s what the authors meant.)

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But keep in mind that this explanation is only an attempt to rationalize the discovery after the fact—creationism or “intelligent design” made no prediction that these specific types of “degenerate” feathers would have existed, while evolution did. The attitude of these authors is equivalent to someone noticing that a Biblical prophecy about the End Times had come precisely true, but saying that this could not be considered an argument in favor of Christianity, because other possible explanations for this event had not been ruled out.

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I was wondering whether it wouldn’t be enough for you that the Telegraph article said paleontologists had predicted the existence of these structures beforehand, and that I was able to tell you exactly who predicted it, and when. Do you expect me to find an illustration someone made of these feathers before they were discovered that they wrote the date on, the way I did for the existence of feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs? If so, you should realize that it’s only through a stroke of luck that I’m able to provide this about any evolutionary prediction. I happen to own the book in which Greg Paul made his prediction, and when Microraptor gui was discovered, the fact that William Beebe had predicted its existence 88 years earlier caused a few people to post images from his prediction online. But if you aren’t willing to trust the Telegraph article, and you’re not willing to do any research about the paleontologists who made this prediction, this is an area where I don’t think I can do it for you.

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I addressed both of these points before, in response to you. In the first case, you ignored what I had to say in response. Combined with your wasting my time trying to get me to explain why amber can preserve feathers the way it did in this case, when you already agreed with me that it could and did, I think you’re now just trying to evade my point the way Bettawrekonize was doing.

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I asked you two questions in my post, and I’m also still waiting for an example of a specific anatomical structure predicted uniquely by creationism (or by “intelligent design”) which has gone on to be discovered. If you aren’t willing to accept these feathers in amber as an example of that in the case of evolution, then just provide something from creationism/ID that’s equivalent to the illustrations I provided from Greg Paul and William Beebe of discoveries that hadn’t been made yet. If you reply to me again, I want two things from you: I want you to answer what I asked you in this post, and I want you to either provide an example of a fulfilled prediction like this from creationism/ID, or admit that creationism and “intelligent design” are not able to make accurate predictions like the two from evolution that I posted originally. If your next reply contains nothing but an effort to avoid these topics like you’ve been doing so far, the only way I’ll reply to you again is to point out that you’re continuing to evade my points, and by doing so implicitly showing that you aren’t able to provide what I’m asking for.

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The question wasn’t one of preservation, but whether they would remain ‘fluffy’ in amber – I continue to say obviously not.

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See, this is what makes me think you aren’t all that familiar with the literature on the subject. Paleornithologist Alan Feduccia specifically discusses the issue in The Origin and Evolution of Birds on p. 130 and deals directly with the degenerate feathers in flightless birds, using that exact term. So to call it ‘biologically meaningless’ is to display a certain amount of ignorance about the subject at hand. You do this no doubt in a vain attempt to cast aspersion on IDists, a tactic which seems to pervade your posts. You should really stop, because you are making yourself look less knowledgeable in the process, besides the obvious logically fallacious nature of the tactic.

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Well, the idea that IDists would have to have predicted feathers that were degenerate from regular feathers is rather silly, as such feathers are already known to exist, and discussed in the literature as I pointed out above. And far from ‘rationalization’, it is instead healthy skepticism about highly interpretive forms of ‘science’.

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So, to sum up this rather rambling response, you yourself have no actual evidence of such a prediction. Just wanted to be clear.

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And as far as the rest, you have never substantively addresses the existence of modern feathers before the period in which the amber feathers were preserved, or the fact that the nature of the organism to which these feathers derived can’t be known with any certainty because the feathers were found in complete isolation. That makes your entire argument at best pure speculation.

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Actually, ID generally predicts that irreducibly and specifically complex structures and systems will be observed to appear fully formed and functional within the fossil record – and this has been consistently observed.

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Well, did these particular feathers remain fluffy while preserved in amber? If they did, then it’s possible. If they didn’t, then there’s no reason to argue about this, is there?

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Feduccia isn’t much of a scientist, and this isn’t something I’m making up for the sake of my argument. If you ask what the general opinion of him is among paleornithologists at any paleontology community (such as Gondolend or the Dinodata forum), the general attitude is that he doesn’t know much of what he’s talking about. And this isn’t because he’s a creationist, since I’m sure you’re aware that he isn’t one.

In this case, he’s using a term that he probably shouldn’t be using, because there’s no specific biological definition for it. In this context (and I’ve read what he’s written about this), he’s referring to feathers that have reverted to an earlier point in their evolutionary history. But I know that isn't what the authors of the article you quoted meant by this term, since if these feathers represented an reversion to an earlier state in their evolution, the fact that they had evolved at all would still confirm the evolutionary prediction about this.

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See, now you’re confusing Feduccia’s definition with the definition used by the authors of that article. The authors were referring to a new mutation that wouldn’t lead anywhere, whereas Feduccia was referring to a previous state resurfacing as a result of a suppressor gene being deactivated. This is why it’s a bad idea to use these sorts of colloquial terms for biological concepts.

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Either way, the prediction made by evolution is not that “degenerate” feathers would exist at all, since by either definition it wouldn’t be difficult to find examples of something so general. The prediction is that these particular types of protofeathers would exist, with unbranched barbs attached in two vanes to a central rachis. On its own, the fact that “degenerate” feathers exist does not imply anything about this specific structure.

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Be specific, now. Is the reason why it doesn’t count as evidence in your mind for the Telegraph article to say these feathers had been previously predicted, because you think its authors are lying? Or is it for some other reason? If it’s the first one, what sort of article would I have to find about this in order for you to believe the authors weren’t lying?

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You quoted my post in which I addressed the fact that the only known preserved protofeathers existed after the first feathers. Here it is again:

And I already addressed your other point about these feathers only existing in sediments from after Archaeopteryx. The same animals that had protofeathers are found in sediments from both before and after Archaeopteryx, but only the Cretaceous sediments are fine enough to preserve skin coverings. Why is it a problem that these animals’ skin is only known from an environment after Archaeopteryx, if the animals that had protofeathers clearly lived both before and after it? Are you suggesting that even though troodontids predated Archaeopteryx, we should assume only the ones that lived after Archaeopteryx had protofeathers?

As for what kind of animal had these protofeathers, for at least the third time now, that’s irrelevant. The only prediction I’m talking about made by evolution about this is that these protofeathers would have existed at all, not what kind of animal had them.

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All right, then let’s seen an example of a specific, fulfilled prediction that was unique to Intelligent Design. And I don’t just mean a general prediction that evolution won’t be able to explain certain things, I mean a specific structure that Intelligent Design was able to describe before it was discovered, like the two I provided for evolution. If all you do is point out a shortcoming in evolution, this won’t support any one particular alternative theory.

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Well, they obviously didn’t, but the question is ‘were they?’ which they may have been; we can’t tell.

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Well, first off, I have noticed a rather sad trend when discussing such issues with evolutionists. They make a claim about a term “it isn’t used by science”. I point out where a scientist did indeed use the term. Then they claim “he isn’t a true scientist”.

It’s called the True Scotsman’s fallacy and in addition to being an affront to logic, it’s annoying – please stop doing it. The term is used in biology; I can cite other places where it is used, you were wrong, just move on.

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You are completely making up what the authors of article believe a degenerate feather to be – why would you do that?

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Again, you have yet to produce an actual prediction of that sort.
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I don’t know how much more specific I can be. You claimed there was a prediction. I asked if you had actually seen the prediction. You claimed the article said there was a prediction. I asked if you had actually seen a prediction. You dissembled.

I ask again, as specifically as I can, where was such a prediction made?

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If such animals most certainly lived before modern feathers existed, and we are certain they had protofeathers, then why is this find in the least noteworthy? Perhaps because there is uncertainty about whether the fossilized finds actually have preserved protofeathers?

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Also, let’s assume for a minute the amber feathers came from type of dinosaur – if the dinosaur also had fully formed modern feathers, would these still constitute proto-feathers?

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Well, intelligent design has made a number of predictions concerning genetic information in terms of usefulness, early complexity, and rapid occurrence, which is its main focus. And has dealt at length with the expectation that structures, systems, body plans, and major groups (like phyla) would be seen to occur fully formed in life’s history as opposed to being the product of gradualism and incidental modification.

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Even if they were, their structure still would’ve been different from that of any feathers that exist today. Losing their “fluffiness” wouldn’t cause the barbs to be attached to the sides of the rachis, rather than to a single point at the end. So as I said, this isn’t relevant.

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This is why I tried to make it clear that what I’m saying about Feduccia isn’t just because he misused this word. The “True Scotsman” fallacy is when a person isn’t considered a “true whatever” for no other reason than supporting the other person’s position in a debate, so that the standard used for a “true whatever” makes impossible to find one that does. In Feduccia’s case, on the other hand, you’ve probably noticed from Raptorman’s thread that he’s accused Chinese paleontologists of operating a secret factory in which they manufacture fake fossils of feathered dinosaurs. Not even young-earth creationists such as Raptorman take Feduccia seriously about this topic. Can you understand why when someone’s “science” is based on a bunch of conspiracy theories that are rejected by people on both sides of this debate, I don’t think he deserves to be considered an authority?

I’m not claiming that no scientist ever uses an unnecessarily vague term like this, but I’m willing to bet that the more examples you find of of scientists using this term, the more different meanings of it I can show you. I’ve already shown you two different meanings it can have. This is what I meant when I said it’s biologically meaningless—not that it’s incapable of meaning anything, but that since it has no specific meaning the way “evolutionary reversal” does, the only way to figure out what a scientists means by this term is based on the context he’s using it in. The word doesn’t refer to any specific biological concept on its own.

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Because it’s the only context in which the argument they’re making would even make sense. If they were using the word “degenerate” the way Feduccia means it, it wouldn’t be an argument against evolution.

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All right, it’s clear you won’t believe me this prediction was ever made at all if I don’t do your research for you, so I went ahead and did. This is a webpage describing peer-reviewed data from 1999 through 2001 about the stages through which, according to the theory of evolution, feathers would have evolved. You can see the dates of these predictions by looking at the citations on the bottom, and the entire website http://www.nurseminerva.co.uk/ has not been updated since January 2007. In the image at the top of the page, the third diagram from the left shows these researchers’ prediction about one of the stages through which feathers would have evolved: unbranched barbs attached in two vanes to the sides of a central rachis. This is an accurate prediction about the structure of this protofeather.

Are you satisfied now that this prediction was actually made?

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No, it’s for two reasons.

1: Even though preserved protofeathers have already been found on other dinosaurs, these protofeathers had become permineralized in the fossilization process. That means their organic components had decomposed, and minerals had seeped in to replace them. This feather preserved in amber is the first known protofeather where all of the original organic material is still present. It might even be possible to extract DNA from it.

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2: Even though protofeathers were already known from the fossils I mentioned, all of protofeathers that had been discovered thus far were at stages earlier or later in the evolution of feathers than this one was. The specific stage in the evolution of feathers represented by this protofeather is one that had been predicted by evolution, but not actually discovered until now.

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The same species of dinosaur that had these protofeathers wouldn’t have had fully-formed feathers also, so this isn’t a meaningful question. All of the individual species of feathered dinosaur discovered so far represent only one particular stage in the evolution of feathers.

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If you can’t, then by the standard of Popperianism that you’ve referred to yourself, Intelligent Design isn’t a complete scientific theory—it’s just an attack on evolution.

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But it would cause them to be less fluffy than chick down, which they are just as likely to be.

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Actually the term is generally used to describe the feathers of ratites and other flightless birds, because such feathers are degenerative in regard to the features one typically finds fully formed on birds that fly – not unlike your imaginary ‘protofeathers’.
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Well at least you acknowledged you made it up. The problem of course is that you are assuming the statement is itself an argument against evolution – instead of what it is, a description of a sort of feather.

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And as all the stages are derived somewhat from the developmental stages of feathers we find today, it is no surprise that something like this would be found eventually. Indeed, as has been noted, it closely resembles already extant feathers. So I will grant you the prediction; personally I don’t find it very robust.

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This seems to me a rather tactic acknowledgement that the presumed ‘protofeather’ status of the integument found previously in the fossil record is dubious.

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And all apparently occurred after the existence of fully formed feathers, which I still find significant.

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You didn’t answer the question. First off, you don’t know what species these feathers came from, so you could not know what such a species might have in terms of various feather ‘stages’.

Being now clear on that point, I’ll ask again - if these feathers came from a dinosaur with fully formed feathers , would these still constitute proto-feathers?