Believing in Feather Tales, part 1

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Believing in Feather Tales, part 1

Ryan Cox • Jun 02, 2022

A feather tale has been told for several decades, but has now reached the silver screen in the final installment of the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World series. The preview for upcoming feathered attractions was released in 1861 with the discovery and promotion of the London Specimen of Archaeopteryx, an extinct bird. Thomas Huxley and others jumped at the opportunity to declare a “missing link” between birds and reptiles, supporting Charles Darwin’s recently published On the Origin of Species (1859). Though it has since been refuted and removed from evolutionary repertoires as a missing link, Huxley got the narrative going of birds being the evolutionary descendants of certain dinosaurs.

The grand premiere came in the 1970s through the influence of Yale professor and paleontologist Dr. John Ostrom. He developed his ideas of dinosaurs being warm-blooded and evolving into birds in the 1960s and taught them to his doctoral student Robert Bakker, who would go on to publish the controversial and very influential “Dinosaur Renaissance” paper in the April 1975 issue of Scientific American. Theirs and the efforts of others greatly popularized the dino-to-bird evolution narrative in the paleontological community.

However, the blockbuster event that most affected the culture was the 1993 release of Jurassic Park. The fictional character Dr. Alan Grant shares in the movie his theory of dinosaurs evolving into birds. His character was based upon renowned paleontologist Jack Horner, who revealed in the behind-the-scenes features his desire to eliminate the reptilian stereotype of dinosaurs, encouraging people to see them instead as birds. Both Horner and Bakker served as advisors to Jurassic Park.

And finally, in 2022, to their and many others’ elation, the grand conclusion to the 6-movie saga, Jurassic World Dominion, displays the culmination of their efforts with the franchise premiere of a fully-feathered dinosaur named Pyroraptor. Tragically, throughout our travels we have seen more and more young people come to believe that dinosaurs were feathered, warm-blooded relatives of birds, convincing them that evolution is true and the Bible is false. THIS IS WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO, travelling the country with our dinosaur fossil collection. Yes, it is cumbersome and time-consuming to haul in and set up dinosaurs, but it is absolutely worth it to have the opportunity to refute the dino-to-bird nonsense and share the incredible, undeniable reliability and accuracy of God’s Word. Our prayer in doing so is the ultimate reason – salvation found in Jesus Christ!

The scientific evidence for the dino-to-bird feather tale is severely lacking. As with many blockbusters, there are sequels, and we shall follow that pattern with this study. Exploring the evidence for feathers, warm or cold-bloodedness, and other anatomical comparisons, we will see how the historical record of God’s Word has and always will stand firm.

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