|
Critic
of bird-dinosaur theory to give Watkins lecture Nov. 1
By
Amy Geiszler-Jones
A critic
of the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs will give a public
lecture Thursday, Nov. 1, as part of WSU’s science lecture
series, the Watkins Visiting Professorship Lecture Series.
Alan
Feduccia, chair of the biology department at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, will talk about "Bird Evolution’s
Big Bang" during the 7:30 p.m. lecture in 209 Hubbard Hall.
He’ll
give a scientific lecture, "T. Rex Was No Four-Ton Road Runner,"
at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 31, in 218 Hubbard Hall.
Feduccia,
who has been studying bird evolution for about three decades, has
developed a "big-bang" theory about bird evolution. He thinks that
the ancestors of all today’s birds evolved explosively in only
about five to 10 million years. In traditional theory, all modern
bird orders appeared by 80 to 90 million years ago.
Feduccia
contends that makes no sense, saying that 65 million years ago,
most birds died with the dinosaurs, except for a group of shorebirds
and possibly a few others. He says that most modern types of birds
evolved somewhere between 65 and 53 million years ago. He challenges
the view that birds evolved from dinosaurs, indicating that the
dinosaurs thought to be most like birds lived 80 million years after
the first-known birds.
Feduccia
has published extensively and has been interviewed frequently, particularly
in the past few years, when some fossils surfaced from a dig in
China and from a Moscow museum. The fossils of plumed dinosaurs
ruffled the feathers of many evolution experts.
Feduccia
is the author of "The Age of Birds," which won the 1981 American
Association of University Presses Award, "The Origin and Evolution
of Birds," and numerous other publications.
The
Watkins Visiting Professorship Lecture Series was established in
1974 by a grant from the Watkins Foundation. The departments of
biological sciences, chemistry, geology and physics host the lectures.
|
