What does Alan Feduccia actually think about Archaeopteryx?

Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous examples of transitional fossils (more precisely: a transitional taxon). This taxon possessed intermediate morphology between modern birds and their non-avian dinosaur ancestors. This fact is heavily disliked among circles promoting creationism and thus many arguments against the transitional nature of fossils belonging to this genus arose. One includes the claim that Alan Feduccia - an American paleornithologist - thinks that Archaeopteryx is simply "just a bird" that has nothing to do with evidence for evolutionary theory.

But are they correct in this assertion?

https://share.google/JFAvfZgqdcaULLgie

A reconstruction of a flying Archaeopteryx

In order to answer this question, we need to explain what a transitional fossil is in the first place. Such fossils are typically defined as fossils showing an intermediate morphology between that of the ancestral and descendant groups and that belong to organisms that diverged before the emergence of the descendant group but after the divergence of the ancestral group. The intermediate morphology may refer to a mosaic morphology (traits of descendants and traits of the ancestor) or morphology with features in an intermediate state (or mixture of both). Now it's time to take a look at the claims of Alan Feduccia. It is certainly true that Alan Feduccia referred to the Archaeopteryx as a bird but that doesn't automatically tell us that he thinks this organism was "just a bird" as creationists claim. The distinction between Archaeopteryx and dinosaurs coming from A. Feduccia doesn't seem to stem from a view that Archaeopteryx is not a transitional fossil but rather from an alternative view of this scientist on evolution of birds. Mr. Feduccia had repeatedly expressed a view that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs but rather from another group of more basal archosaurs (a view rejected by the vast majority of modern paleontologists and biologists). He refers to this group of hypothetical archosaurs as thecodonts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Feduccia#/media/File:Feduccia3.tif

Photo of Alan Feduccia taken in 2009

Now it's time to take a more direct look at Feduccia's work. The most important paper we will consider here is Perspectives in Ornithology Archaeopteryx 2007: Quo Vadis?. I could go into much detail but I think it will be much easier to quote the relevant part of this paper:

Archaeopteryx has made a tortuous transition over the years, from a bird in the modern sense in Heilmann's (1926) classic treatise The Origin of Birds, to an earthbound feathered theropod that could not fly (Bakker 1975), to a theropod learning to fly from the ground up (Ostrom 1979). Today, dinosaur specialists typically view Archaeopteryx as a terrestrial, predatory cursor, whereas most ornithologists see an arboreal, volant, albeit primitive bird with reptilian features (Martin 1991, Tarsitano 1991, Feduccia 1999, Feduccia et al. 2005), and the urvogel has been shown to possess a sophisticated “bird brain” with neural capabilities for flight (Martin 1995, Dominguez Alonso et al. 2004). Two recent publications bring additional focus to this iconic fossil.

As you can see Feduccia cites his own work as an example of scientists who view Archaeopteryx as a primitive bird with a mix of derived and ancestral, reptilian traits. This is already problematic for creationist claims that Alan Feduccia views Archaeopteryx as "just a bird" since modern birds do not possess such reptilian features. This view is even more contested once we go into the phylogenetic position Feduccia places the Archaeopteryx in.

https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/154856490/i0004-8038-124-2-373-f03.gif

The description of this figure in the previously mentioned paper calls Archaeopteryx a basal bird, rather than referring to it as a member of modern birds (Neornithes within Ornithurae). This is a scenario not expected from a view of "just a bird".

To sum up: Alan Feduccia views Archaeopteryx as an organism with a lot of derived, bird features but also showing reptilian characteristics and thus being basal and primitive and places Archaeopteryx far outside of modern birds. In other words... Alan Feduccia by the very definition calls Archaeopteryx a transitional fossil (or more precisely a transitional taxon). He simply thinks that Archaeopteryx was a transition not between dinosaurs and birds but between birds and earlier archosaurs. This clearly shows that creationists undoubtedly ignore the context of deeming Archaeopteryx a bird by Feduccia and desperately impose their understanding of that term to redefine his work as evidence against evolutionary theory. In reality, the usage of the term "bird" is not restricted to modern birds but also includes their primitive ancestors and relatives. In this regard this usage has already been present in other forms of scientific/science communication literature. For example this article on Archaeopteryx has this to say about it:

Ironically, the features that Hoyle saw as proof of the fossil's inauthenticity - it's mixture of Compsognathus-like bones and modern feathers - are some of the most important clues that paleontologists have for understanding how birds and bird flight evolved. Its combination of anatomical characteristics from two distinct classes of animals make Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, a textbook example of a transitional form between reptiles and modern birds.

As you can see, the terms "bird" and "transitional form" have been repeatedly used alongside each other and are not inherently contradictory. Such usage also explains Feduccia's often misused quote i.e. the one where he calls Archaeopteryx not a dinosaur but a perching bird. The previously mentioned work undeniably shows that A. Feduccia views Archaeopteryx as an arboreal (percher in contrast to an alternative terrestrial view) modern birds' relative and not as a perching bird in the sense of passerine birds (Passeriformes) which is seemingly understood by creationists to mean that. Similarly, in the 2014 paper Jurassic archosaur is a non-dinosaurian bird Feduccia states:

Contrary to previous interpretations in which Scansoriopteryx was considered to be a coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur, the absence of fundamental dinosaurian characteristics demonstrates that it was not derived from a dinosaurian ancestry and should not be considered as a theropod dinosaur. Furthermore, the combination in which highly plesiomorphic non-dinosaurian traits are retained along with highly derived features, yet only the beginnings of salient birdlike characteristics, indicates that the basal origins of Aves stemmed from outside the Dinosauria and further back to basal archosaurs. Impressions of primitive elongate feathers on the forelimbs and hindlimbs suggest that Scansoriopteryx represents a basal form of “tetrapteryx” in which incipient aerodynamics involving parachuting or gliding was possible. Along with unique adaptations for an arboreal lifestyle, Scansoriopteryx fulfills predictions from the early twentieth century that the ancestors of birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, and instead were derived from earlier arboreal archosaurs which originated flight according to the traditional trees-down scenario.

After reading Feduccia's work it becomes abundantly clear that he uses this term to refer to organisms even more primitive than Archeopteryx with bird-like features being only in their incipient stages. Thus any implications of Feduccia's opposition to Archaeopteryx's transitional nature are ludicrous. Such tactics fit neatly into one of the phenomena I've described in my Creationism is not scientifically valid - why I've created this blog? post i.e. creationists citing evidence but that evidence actually not supporting what they're saying.

Now it's time to focus on other aspects of Feduccia's work and specifically its critcism. Feduccia's work against birds belonging to Dinosauria has been repeatedly criticized and has been deemed by some as pseudoscientific. For example his work was criticized for the rejection of cladistics (method of classification based on common ancestry rather than on overall trait similarity which allows for a much more precise determination of phylogenetic relationiships). Feduccia's rejection of cladistics based on incorrect phylogenetic trees produced by this method has been pointed out to be especially weak given the fact that these incorrect cladistic analyses have been revised not because of some other methodologies but due to later cladistic analyses thus making cladistics not a problem but a solution. His work was also criticized for being essentially unfalsifiable since he reinterprets evidence to meet his presuposition of birds not being dinosaurs (for example once feathered dromaeosaurs were discovered he deemed them to be birds even though he previously claimed they are theropods that have nothing to do with birds). This aspect of lack of falsifiability of his research echoes the tactics perpetuated by creationists which I discussed in Creationism is not scientifically valid - problem of falsifiability.

Furthermore, later analyses and studies firmly refuted for example Feduccia's characterization of Sinosauropteryx's proto-feathers as collagen fibers (Rhetoric vs. reality: A commentary on “Bird Origins Anew” by A. Feduccia) as well as the hypothesis of Scansoriopteryx (and Scansoriopterygidae) being in close affinity rests on weak evidence and Scansoriopterygidae are almost certainly nested within Maniraptoran dinosaurs (Paravian Phylogeny and the Dinosaur-Bird Transition: An Overview). There are also many other issues with denial of theropod origin of birds and I hope to discuss them in the future articles.

The last but not least caveat regarding A. Feduccia and creationists is how the latter use quotes of the former. Creationists commonly use the tactic of argument from authority - a logical fallacy designed to bypass the analysis of data and instead to rely on the opinion of a given authority. This is especially egregious given the fact that it is used to debate science, which relies predominantly (if not exclusively) on data and analyses of it. Creationists frequently take Feduccia's words out of context and present them as a gotcha that means to convey "you're totally wrong bro because this very very incredibly absolutely smart guy tells me so!". This alone is enough to view "Archaeopteryx = just a bird 'cause Alan Feduccia" argument as deeply problematic because instead of using specific arguments from Alan Feduccia, they usually only reiterate his (commonly misrepresented) conclusion. Because of that even if Alan Feduccia truly believed that Archaeopteryx is "just a totally regular bird" this argument would still be weak. Nevertheless, Feduccia clearly considers this taxon to be transitional between birds and their reptilian ancestors and his denial of the dinosaur origin of birds if refuted by vast amounts of data.