I don't know if you remember the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" that always fly in the sky?
So, some people can't help but ask, will it be the ancestor of our modern birds?
If so, what evidence is there?
Liaoning ancient birds and reports
Back in November 1998, National Geographic published an article titled "Did Tyrannosaurus Rex Have Feathers?" 》
A fossil called the "Liaoning Ancient Robber Bird" turned out to be a "flying dinosaur".
This fossil with dinosaur tails and bird bodies finally leads to the claim that the ancestors of birds are dinosaurs.
Illegally smuggled "ancient pirate birds" were returned to China
As soon as this news came out, it occupied the headlines of the world media, and was even rated as one of the top ten scientific news of the year.
But because the fossil was illegally smuggled into the United States from China, the Geographic Association of America also coordinated the return of the fossil to China.
As everyone knows, a ridiculous hoax is raging, and it was not revealed until The Chinese scientist Xu Xing and others studied it.
Stephen Sykes is a museum curator.
Although he did not go to college, he preferred to collect everything about dinosaurs.
So he simply opened a dinosaur museum in a small Town usa.
Once, he went to Tucson, the largest fossil market in the United States, to harvest precious dinosaur crafts, etc., but he failed to do so.
Before leaving, however, he found a vendor in the corner hawking a new fossil that had just been unearthed.
Asking closely, it turned out that this was a fossil "transported" from China.
At first glance, it would seem like a strange animal that is half bird and half reptile.
Sykes was immediately attracted, thinking that this fossil that had never been seen before was bound to be not so simple.
Unaware of his identity, the well-informed Sykes realized that it might be a priceless treasure.
Sykes
So Sykes spent $80,000 to buy the fossil from a vendor to identify it.
However, after buying it, he went through all the literature and found no fossil similar to it.
In desperation, he could only write to his old friend Philip Currie about the beginning and end of the fossil.
It is worth mentioning that Currie was a famous Canadian biologist at that time, and the most experienced expert in the world in the study of theropod dinosaurs.
Huxley
At that time, the origins of birds remained an unsolved mystery.
Although the British naturalist Huxley has long associated birds with small dinosaurs running on the ground, and proposed that birds originated from dinosaurs.
But struggling to find key evidence of the evolution of dinosaurs to birds, his doctrine has never been recognized by the world.
Therefore, Currie immediately realized that the research results of this fossil would write an important mark in the annals of history.
But the source of a fossil made him hesitate to study it.
Gerty
Although Sykes claims that the vendors who sold the fossil had already stated that the fossil was legally obtained and was legally exported.
But the discerning person can see that this is just an "excuse".
It turned out that he had already heard that China had banned the export of fossils since 1982.
So, Curry's only condition was to return it to China after the study was completed.
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
With the help of the National Geographic Society, Currie persuaded Sykes to sign a restitution agreement with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
At the same time, they also warmly invited domestic scholars Such as Xu Xing and others to participate in the research.
However, due to the busy business of Xu Xing and his party, they did not find this strange fossil specimen at first.
CT scan fossils (not in the performance article)
However, in order to make it "famous in the world" as soon as possible, Sykes commissioned Timothy Rowe, a professor at the University of Texas, to perform a CT scan of the fossil specimen.
After more than 100 hours of scanning to generate a large number of pictures, they found that the entire fossil was composed of 88 fragments.
Judging from the specimen itself, it has a more progressive bird body.
For example, the skeletal morphology of its shoulder straps and forelimbs is quite advanced, which can indicate that this animal may have a strong ability to fly.
But it also had a long tail, which was almost morphologically different from the tail of a type of dinosaur called Chilong.
Isn't the combination of this flying enough to prove that the origin of birds is dinosaurs?
With this, even if some traces of artificial splicing are found at the time of scanning, it is very likely that they are forged.
But Sykes chose to ignore or even cover up this fact.
Later, when Chinese scholars Xu Xing and others saw this specimen for the first time, they also directly pointed out some details of the specimen being stitched together.
But Sykes et al. further concealed this fact on the grounds that fossil collectors were glorifying the specimens.
They will bypass it and find a good way to make the fossil discovery public.
They submitted an article titled "A Toothed Bird with a Dragon-Like Tail" to the prestigious academic journals Nature and Science.
Unfortunately, they both rejected the article because more evidence was needed to prove that the fossil did indeed have bird characteristics.
But in those days, it wasn't hard to get public support.
Media coverage
Soon, the world-famous news agency The Associated Press received the news and announced to the world:
The researchers found the fossils of the most primitive flying dinosaurs and directly pointed out that the missing key link between dinosaurs and birds in the process of biological evolution was finally connected.
In the news, they named the animal "Liaoning Ancient Bandit Bird" and attached a photo of the Liaoning Ancient Rogue Bird restored by Sykes.
Be a "flying dinosaur"! As soon as this news came out, it immediately made headlines on the front page of the world's major media, and could not wait for this new discovery to be sent to every place in the world.
Articles published by National Geographic
This time, National Geographic editor-in-chief Allen couldn't sit still, though he didn't know that two other authoritative journals had rejected it once.
In order to get more first-hand details, he commissioned the reporter Sloan to prepare a report on the fossils of ancient birds.
In November 1999, the headline article written by Sloan was "Did the Tyrannosaurus Rex Have Feathers?" was officially published in National Geographic.
But while people were still immersed in the joy of this paleontological discovery, Xu Xing, a doctor at the China Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, sent a message and poured a basin of cold water on it: "Ancient Robber Bird" is a forged specimen!
In the news, Xu Xing pointed out that when he and his colleagues studied another specimen of theropods taken from Liaoning, they found that the tail of this specimen was exactly half the tail of the ancient bird specimen.
This also fully shows that the "Liaoning Ancient Robber Bird" is a man-made "species" pieced together by the bones of different animals.
The national geographic association immediately organized an expert appraisal team to conduct precision appraisal, and specially invited Xu Xing to carry the evidence to the United States.
It was finally determined that the fossils of the "ancient bird" in Liaoning were at least a patchwork of two animals.
Fossils of swallow birds
In April 2000, National Geographic also publicly admitted its mistake.
In the report, the Liaoning ancient robber bird was put together from two fossils, its upper body was Yanornis sp. (Swallow Bird) and the lower body was Microraptor sp..
Both animals are from the Early Cretaceous, Rehe biota in Liaoning, China, and it is likely that someone glued the fragmented fossils together to make a fake specimen.
Fossils of small thornosaurs
In fact, the "two" hind legs of the ancient robber bird are basically one leg, that is, the same stone containing fossils.
After splitting from it, you can get two stone slabs with fossils printed on them, called "positive mode" and "negative mode". The hind legs of the ancient thief bird are the positive and negative molds of the same small thief's legs.
What is even more incredible is that the front half of the ancient thief bird is lying on its back facing the sky, but the tail is "lying on its stomach" and the back is facing the sky.
People who have some experience with fossils will find that it is not only fake, but the technology of counterfeiting is not yet sophisticated.
Such a composite creature may simply come from the whimsical ideas of some fossil trafficker.
To make more money, he used some kind of homemade glue to glue together slabs with fossilized bird bodies and slabs with tails.
At the same time, he also used other fossil fragments to form a complete fossil of a bird with a tail.
And one of the fossil excavations was accidental, breaking it apart. When it splits the slate in two along the level, it becomes what paleontologists often call the main and secondary models.
People can't help but ask, why is there such a big flaw in the famous United States under the layers of control?
Fortunately, through the efforts of Chinese scientists, it was quickly corrected and a larger scientific tragedy was avoided.
A group of scientists study the Pirdane skull
However, the fossil counterfeiting scam is not the first time, as early as 1912 The farce of the Pirdane skull was staged.
The parties allege found some interesting bones in a gravel pit.
Paleontologists at the British Museum assembled the bones and believed they reflected a "lost link" between humans and ape-men.
It wasn't until 40 years later that scientists proved that the Pirdanes were just a deliberate fraud.
Simulate a restored ancient bird
Although science and technology are developed today, there are more efficient means to see through these tricks.
But as long as greed and quick-fixity remain, forgery scams will continue to emerge, hoodwinking some equally utilitarian scientists.
*References
Archaeoraptor.Wikipedia
Scientists uncover the truth that the fossil of "ancient bird robber" is artificially spelled[J]. Xinjiang Geology,2003,(01):
LONG Yuan. The task of maintaining scientific ethics is not easy: From the "Liaoning Ancient Robber Bird" fake fossil incident[J]. Science News,2000,(43):2-3.