Are birds older than dinosaurs? New evidence!

A new analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation Mexico and Central America, and Boston University offers the strongest molecular evidence yet for an ancient origin of modern birds, suggesting that they arose more than 100 million years ago, not 60 million years ago, as fossils suggest. The question is at the center of a "rocks versus clocks" debate between paleontologists, whose estimates are based on the fossil record, and scientists who use "molecular clock" methods to study evolutionary history. Fossil record contains physical remains of ancient organisms, hence the"rock" analogy. Molecular genetic data or the "clock" method relies on the observation that although mutations occur at random in the genome, when looked at over long stretches of time they occur (or "tick") at a fairly constant rate. However, the two approaches have yielded conflicting results. Both camps insist that the other's data is incomplete.

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