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The Ankle Bone’s Connected to the Shinbone . . .
Below your knee you don’t have a chicken-like drumstick. You have two leg bones: the thicker shinbone (the tibia) and the thinner fibula. The knobs on the sides of your ankle are the lower ends of these bones. These paired bones are a great design, and the hind legs of dinosaurs and of most other tetrapods are similarly equipped. Though the fibula is much thinner than the tibia and supports comparatively little weight even among those of us who walk on two legs, it serves an important role in stabilizing the ankle and providing leverage for the muscles attached below the knee.
But a bird’s lower limbs are designed differently. A bird’s knee and the thighbone above it are hidden up inside the bird’s body. This hidden part of the bird’s leg helps prevent abdominal air sacs from collapsing and helps it breathe. (Learn more about this unique bird-breathing arrangement in “Lizard Breath Fails to Support Kinship with Birds.”) Because it walks with its hips and legs at different angles from biped humans and theropod dinosaurs, a bird doesn’t need the stability and leverage afforded by a full-length fibula and its attachments. The fibula on a chicken is very thin and so short it doesn’t even reach the ankle, leaving the bird to support its weight on its tibias.
Now why are we comparing the bird’s fibula to a dinosaur’s? Not surprisingly, it is because evolutionary scientists think birds evolved from dinosaurs. And to help prove it, they’ve gone to the laboratory and engineered a chicken embryo to grow a dinosaur-like lower leg. The drumsticks on these chickens—if they were allowed to mature and hatch—would be unrecognizable as a chicken leg, containing two sturdy bones instead of one and the splintery fibula like what we find hidden in the drumstick when we chow down on a bucket of “extra crispy.”
Similarity of Leg Bones
The lower limbs of a theropod dinosaur (left), a modern bird (middle), and a human (right) are illustrated here for comparison. All have a femur with a knee below it, a tibia, and a fibula. Much of a bird's lower limb is enclosed within its feather-covered body. Unlike the dinosaur's and the human's, the bird's fibula is splinter-like and so short it does not even reach the ankle.
Embryonic Birds and Evolutionary Baby Steps
Because evolutionists believe the dinosaur ancestors of birds acquired their bird features in a series of small steps, “the experiments are focused on single traits, to test specific hypotheses,” says Alexander Vargas, in whose lab Botelho grew the malformed chickens. “Not only do we know a great deal about bird development, but also about the dinosaur-bird transition, which is well-documented by the fossil record,” he says. “This leads naturally to hypotheses on the evolution of development, that can be explored in the lab.”1
Well, we do know a lot about bird development, as eggs have been studied for years, their familiar embryological stages making them a staple in undergraduate biology laboratories. But we do not, from observable evidence, know anything about the “dinosaur-bird transition” since it has never been observed and even defies the observable biological fact that living things reproduce and vary only within their created kinds. The claim that this evolutionary transition is “well-documented by the fossil record” is a worldview-based claim, not a claim based on observable scientific evidence. The existence of many varieties of birds and many varieties of dinosaurs in layers in the fossil record does not demonstrate that one evolved into the other or anything about their origin, only that they existed and were catastrophically buried and fossilized.
Below your knee you don’t have a chicken-like drumstick. You have two leg bones: the thicker shinbone (the tibia) and the thinner fibula. The knobs on the sides of your ankle are the lower ends of these bones. These paired bones are a great design, and the hind legs of dinosaurs and of most other tetrapods are similarly equipped. Though the fibula is much thinner than the tibia and supports comparatively little weight even among those of us who walk on two legs, it serves an important role in stabilizing the ankle and providing leverage for the muscles attached below the knee.
But a bird’s lower limbs are designed differently. A bird’s knee and the thighbone above it are hidden up inside the bird’s body. This hidden part of the bird’s leg helps prevent abdominal air sacs from collapsing and helps it breathe. (Learn more about this unique bird-breathing arrangement in “Lizard Breath Fails to Support Kinship with Birds.”) Because it walks with its hips and legs at different angles from biped humans and theropod dinosaurs, a bird doesn’t need the stability and leverage afforded by a full-length fibula and its attachments. The fibula on a chicken is very thin and so short it doesn’t even reach the ankle, leaving the bird to support its weight on its tibias.
Now why are we comparing the bird’s fibula to a dinosaur’s? Not surprisingly, it is because evolutionary scientists think birds evolved from dinosaurs. And to help prove it, they’ve gone to the laboratory and engineered a chicken embryo to grow a dinosaur-like lower leg. The drumsticks on these chickens—if they were allowed to mature and hatch—would be unrecognizable as a chicken leg, containing two sturdy bones instead of one and the splintery fibula like what we find hidden in the drumstick when we chow down on a bucket of “extra crispy.”
Similarity of Leg Bones
The lower limbs of a theropod dinosaur (left), a modern bird (middle), and a human (right) are illustrated here for comparison. All have a femur with a knee below it, a tibia, and a fibula. Much of a bird's lower limb is enclosed within its feather-covered body. Unlike the dinosaur's and the human's, the bird's fibula is splinter-like and so short it does not even reach the ankle.
Embryonic Birds and Evolutionary Baby Steps
Because evolutionists believe the dinosaur ancestors of birds acquired their bird features in a series of small steps, “the experiments are focused on single traits, to test specific hypotheses,” says Alexander Vargas, in whose lab Botelho grew the malformed chickens. “Not only do we know a great deal about bird development, but also about the dinosaur-bird transition, which is well-documented by the fossil record,” he says. “This leads naturally to hypotheses on the evolution of development, that can be explored in the lab.”1
Well, we do know a lot about bird development, as eggs have been studied for years, their familiar embryological stages making them a staple in undergraduate biology laboratories. But we do not, from observable evidence, know anything about the “dinosaur-bird transition” since it has never been observed and even defies the observable biological fact that living things reproduce and vary only within their created kinds. The claim that this evolutionary transition is “well-documented by the fossil record” is a worldview-based claim, not a claim based on observable scientific evidence. The existence of many varieties of birds and many varieties of dinosaurs in layers in the fossil record does not demonstrate that one evolved into the other or anything about their origin, only that they existed and were catastrophically buried and fossilized.
Read more: Can Scientists Rewind Supposed Evolution of Dinosaurs to Birds?