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Anonymous
Anonymous asked in Science & MathematicsOther - Science · 9 years ago

If Dinosaurs Evolved into Birds then could Birds Evolve into Dinosaurs?

I was reading online about dinosaurs cause they interest me and ive been wondering this question for ages now so thought I would ask it.

Update:

Ok, maybe not evolve into Dinosaurs exactly but evolve into dinosaurs type animals, if you get me?

9 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    NO!!! Of course not.

    Evolution doesn't...can't...REVERSE.

  • ?
    Lv 6
    9 years ago

    Birds may not have evolved from dinosaurs at all. They may have evolved from gliding reptiles that pre-dated the dinosaurs. And the theropod dinosaurs that birds supposedly evolved from, may actually have evolved from ancient birds themselves.

    Birds have many features in common with theropods which suggests that they had a common ancestor. We dont know that this ancestor was a dinosaur though. It may well have been a bird...

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201%E2%80%A6

    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/06/old%E2%80%A6

    Looking back in time through the theropod fossil record, these dinosaurs appear to be more bird-like the further *back* in time you look. Raptors are known to have had feathers and were fairly bird-like, but Archaeopteryx was much more bird-like and lived much earlier and may have been an ancestor of the raptors. There is also a controversial fossil called Protoavis that was dated even earlier and was more bird-like still, with hollow bones like modern birds.

    So birds may have been around throughout the mesozoic era and pre-date the dinosaurs. We have little record of them though because their more fragile, hollow bones decompose very easily so are less likely to leave fossils. We do have some very ancient bird footprints though...

    http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/june02/We%E2%80%A6

    imo, birds did not evolve from dinosaurs at all, but rather from some earlier reptile like this...

    http://www.livescience.com/1607-ancient-gliding-re...

    And some dinosaurs, like the raptors, may have evolved from ancient birds, so it may be more accurate to simply call those flightless birds, rather than calling birds dinosaurs.

  • 9 years ago

    Actually I like the answer provided by David D. but would like to add that I recently watched a video on the TED Talks site that means a good deal. This professor type was saying how recent exams, indicate that many of the dinosaur types named over the years, were actually just the young version of adults that were already classified (under another name).

    This would no doubt shake up the study of paleontology pretty badly; but also shows why the scientific method is so good: it will in time be self-correcting.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    9 years ago

    Given the right conditions the answer would have to be yes. In practice it is highly unlikely because the environment has changed so that selection probably no longer favours evolution in that direction. Even if it did the probability of actually reversing several steps by random mutation is miniscule.

    Evolution to a previous form is still regarded as evolution.

    [edit]

    Who says "Evolution doesn't...can't...REVERSE.?

    The lengths of beaks on Galapagos Is finches has been quoted as an example of evolution and changes have reversed there. Of course this only involves a change of allele frequency in a population over time so it is quite easy to reverse.

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  • Anonymous
    9 years ago

    evolution works by accumulated changes

    is is very complicated.

    is is possible that if you take a deck of card and Shuffle into a different " hand" you could Shuffle again and again and get the "original" hand? yes possible BUT not likely to happen in millions of tries.

    the deck of card have only 52 units. the DNA has hundreds of thousands of units.

    it depends on how close to "dinosaur" you mean. every species was different

    keep thinking and learn more about biology and genetics

    the "Jurassic park " story is not possible today but in theory something like that might be done. for example and ancient Mammoth or Mastodon might be recreated by cloning using an elephant mother

    Source(s): biology is changing very fast
  • 9 years ago

    The environment in which dinosaurs thrived no longer exists. Birds have adapted quite well to the environments we have now. Changes toward the dinosaurs would almost certainly be harmful rather than beneficial.

  • 9 years ago

    in the first place evolution is still just a theory... it is not fact. Using this theory as a substratum for more suppositions and hypothesese is like building a castle upon wet sand. --all answers to such questions must then be very tentative at best and probably not worth the paper they're written on.

    Source(s): 27 years research physics, quantum physics, relativity, cosmology, metaphysics
  • 9 years ago

    No...

    It is unlikely because the current environment is different (both climate and flora and fauna)...

    Evolution is NOT a random process but it is, to a large extent, an environment driven process...

  • Anonymous
    9 years ago

    LOL

    It wouldn't be evolving if it went backwards, huh?

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