Former agnostic, now Christian

[lucent]

I think you're the one hallucinating because the article doesn't say any of that at all. What it says is that the recent find, called Xiaotingia, knocks Archaeopteryx off of its perch as the ancestral bird/reptile intermediate because the traits they both have in common make it appear that Archaeopteryx is not actually a bird and more closely related to Velociraptors. It didn't supplement it at all, as you can clearly see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaotingia

As far as this quote mining is concerned, all I have to say is, are you kidding me? 4.7 spends about 20 paragraphs trying to prove that he didn't actually mean what he said. There are those acrobatics eldiniro is referring to.

So, to sum up here..you addressed nothing I said, countered none of my assertions, but rather tried to play a gotcha game with me on Archaeopteryx and one particular quote. This is a rather weak response, I have to say.

A question, if I may: why did you post the link to the Nature article? Clearly you haven't read it; or if you have, you failed to understand the words. Nowhere in that article does it say anything about the debunking of Archaeopteryx. What it does say, however, is that a recent discovery appears to supplant that more famous fossil as the basal type of the species. Hey, how about that; science learns new stuff!

In other words, and bearing in mind any apparent expert knowledge is merely the result of trying to learn from others more knowledgable in the field, we once thought that Archaeopteryx was the archetypal bird, on the transition point between reptile and avian. Now we find that, apparently, this previously-unknown theropod is the real archetypal bird, on the transition point between reptile and avian. Congratulations - you've used a transtional fossil to shoot down a transitional fossil. Keep up the good work, and pretty soon you'll have single-handedly shut down the entire creationist/intelligent design/etc movement.

As for your carefully-mined quotes - and I use the word 'carefully' quite wrongly -have a quick read-through of the ever-popular TalkOrigins Quote Mine Project (with emphasis on the section entitled "Quote #4.7" regarding Harrison Matthews) then get back to us. I'd be very interested in your response.

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Fraid not.

Stimbo with a steel boot to the balls. Oh dear, Lucent, this looks bad for you. More acrobatics required!