On 03/06/2014 08:43 AM, Paul H. wrote:
Pigment Or Bacteria? The Idea Of 'Color' In Fossil
Feathers Gets A Rethink, Science 2.0, March 6, 2014
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/pigment_or_bacteria_idea_color_fossil_feathers_gets_rethink-131025
Pigment or Bacteria? Researchers Re-examine the
Idea of ‘Color’ in Fossil Feathers by Tracey Peake
North Carolina State University News Services
http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/tp-feathercolor/
The paper is:
Moyer, A. E., W. Zheng, E. A. Johnson, M. C.
Lamanna, D.-q. Li, K. J. Lacovara, and M. H.
Schweitzer, 2014, Melanosomes or Microbes:
Testing an Alternative Hypothesis for the Origin
Scientific Reports. no. 4, Article no. 4233
doi:10.1038/srep04233
http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140228/srep04233/full/srep04233.html
Yours,
Paul H.
not good science. This paper is based on an experiment with chicken
feathers to show that such microscopic structures can be made by
growing bacteria on chicken feathers. So what. Now bury it in a wet
anaerobic sediment for a 100 million years and see then see if you
get these structures as well as that they form such elegant patterns
over the body of the animal, emulating a very naturalistic design and
rational topography along the flight feathers and such...
The approach, IMO, just doesn't fly.