Giant Megalapteryx Foot! An exercise in Critical Thinking.

Since I am a teacher and the internet is a thing, I often get students showing me pictures and videos that they found on "this one website" which is totally credible because it is run by "this one dude who probably has a Ph.D. in science or something.  Astrology or something?" Anyway, this reared its head today, probably because it was found on the IFLS  Facebook feed. I like to use these things to help the students sharpen their critical thinking skills.         

The caption for this picture is technically correct, which, as we all know, is the best kind of correct.  However it does require a bit of description before it becomes correct in a way that is more than technical.  Allow me to explain.  

First, the foot in the picture is, indeed, from a Megalapteryx.  So far, so good.  Megalypteryx is sometimes better known as the Moa, a giant flightless bird from New Zealand.  Think Kevin from "Up", only not nearly as colorful.  They went extinct in around 1500 A.D.

Second, the Moa is, indeed, a dinosaur.  All birds are, and not just in the technical, "we classified them so they are dinosaurs" kind of way.  As mentioned in a different post, taxonomists now classify them as "Avian Dinosaurs" due to the number of structural and physiological similarities between living birds and extinct dinosaurs.  So technically, Megalapteryx is a dinosaur.  

Third, the flesh on it is well preserved.  So if we put all those things together, technically the foot in the picture is the possibly the best preserved dinosaur tissue to date.  None of those things are wrong, but the way it is presented isn't that great.  You are supposed to see that picture and think, "Holy cow!  They discovered a dinosaur foot and it totally still has skin on it!  How cool is that?!?"  However, you are also probably supposed to think that the dinosaur foot in question is 65 million years old or more which, I am sorry to say, it is not.  

Don't fret though.  The fact that something like this existed only about 600 years ago is fairly amazing, and just look at that foot!  Could it be any more dinosaur-like?  Yet another easy to see clue that shows that birds evolved from dinosaurs.