When attemping to put the pieces together, in creating a simple, straight forward, factual discussion on the evolution of birds. I think the most interesting part of this discussion is how things are discovered. Bring ignorance a few steps closer to the truth. Finding this truth never comes easy or without sacrifices. It is the individual scientist that must stick his/her neck out to state their theories. This leads to controversy and debate and it is this debate that pushes science forward. What palaeontologiests have been able to do with even just pieces of an ancient animals, it is really remarkable. With the development of new techniques and technologies, they have been able to manipulate and produce new clues that bring us closer to the absolute truth, on the evolution of birds. As I have stated before, throughout my research I really noticed that the pieces of the evolutionary puzzle are still quite at large, and the pieces of the puzzle that are present, are not really in a presentable fashion. We must not take this as a negative comment, but rather it can give us an opportunity to ask the question,"Why is this so?"
So, lets ask the question; Why are things so misunderstood? Well, besides from the obvious; ie. the lack of information in the fossil record, for reasons that can easily be explained by:
Birds
and reptiles are terrestrial animals, which lead to very poor preservable
conditions.
The bird's
body is difficult to preserve, because it is so fragile, due to the mass
and structure of the body, but most importantly the air cavities within
the body and bones that easily expose the body to taphonomic processes.
It is very difficult to look into the past, since it is not very often that we find an excellently preserved entire soft and hard body of a fosilized organism in its natural environment. There has to be something more to this than what has been stated, because other terrestrial animals like mammals or even reptiles are not as misunderstood as the aven group.
