Dinosaur feathers

Interesting letter from John Fong, Bob Brockie (January 15). Yes, interesting, but wrong premise and flawed research, appears to be the product of an inflexible perspective. Let us not dicker about the ‘‘feathers’’ actually being, quote, ‘‘. . . frayed structural collagen fibres’’ or in fact feathers, even though collagen is easily degraded, while feathers, nails, claws, and horns are all made of the same basic element, keratin . . . described by science as being, ‘‘hard as nails’’, while collagen is quite quickly reduced by decay and soil chemicals . . . meaning that feathers are almost as durable as bone, and far more likely to survive to become fossilised than collagen, which is more akin to fatty tissue. Mr Fong is quite wrong to infer that dinosaurs can be dated relatively recently in the creation/evolutionary scale because their blood and collagen have been found and could not have lasted millions of years. Well . . . you can knock me down with a dinosaur-feather if that is true. The only record of dinosaur blood surviving to modern times, is in the gut of insects preserved in amber . . . millions of years ago. There have been no finds in ancient strata yet, of modern day animals, even in forms which allow for environmental adaption changes. Could it be that missing links have been found and misinterpreted, or simply have not yet been discovered . . . or can we conclude that modern animals had not even nearly evolved into the recognised species we see today . . . during the time of the dinosaurs?

Dennis Pennefather

Te Awamutu