Proof of Evolution?
The Search for the Mole-Bird

This is being proposed to the evolutionists as a possible intermediate form to find that may help in giving some strong support to the theory of Evolution. Or maybe it will give something else.

The extinction of the dinosaurs according to the meteor theory involves scenes of unbelievable destruction:

What do we do with these impact scenarios? Naturally, we compare them with the evidence from the geological record. Birds, tortoises, and mammals live on land and breathe air: the evidence from the K-T boundary shows that they survived the K-T boundary event. Therefore they and the air they breathed weren't set on broil for several hours. To put it simply, these scenarios did not happen.
History of Life, Richard Cowen, 2000.
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen2b.html

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

The survival of birds is the strangest of all the K-T boundary events, if we are to accept the catastrophic scenarios. Smaller dinosaurs overlapped with larger birds in size and in ecological roles as terrestrial bipeds. How did birds survive while dinosaurs did not? Birds seek food in the open, by sight; they are small and warm-blooded, with high metabolic rates and small energy stores. Even a sudden storm or a slightly severe winter can cause high mortality among bird populations. Yet an impact scenario, according to its enthusiasts, includes "a nightmare of environmental disasters, including storms, tsunamis, cold and darkness, greenhouse warming, acid rains and global fires." There must be some explanation for the survival of birds, turtles, and crocodiles through any catastrophe of this scale, or else the catastrophe models are wrong.
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen3b.html

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

there was no extinction in the insects, a group that should have been the most sensitive to a global catastrophe predicted by the impact advocates. ... Nor do the birds show much extinction, even though they too should have been vulnerable (Chiappe 1995). ...
some extreme impact scenarios postulate extensive acid rain bathing the earth for a long time after the impact. However, the survival of amphibians shows that this is simply a fantasy (Weil 1984). Amphibians breathe through their porous skins and are sensitive to slight changes in the acidity of their watery habitat. Even now, the slightly more acidic conditions of lakes and ponds due to human-induced acid rain are causing frogs and salamanders to die out rapidly. If the entire earth had been subjected to a huge acid bath, there simply would not be a frog or salamander alive on the earth today. p.38.
After the Dinosaurs, Donald R. Prothero, 2006.

Frogs, Salamanders

Frogs, Salamanders

Frogs, Salamanders

The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated diameter of 11-81 kilometers (6.8-50.3 mi), and delivered an estimated energy of 21-921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

The impact had a kinetic energy of more than 10 billion megatonnes. This is a thousand times the amount of energy contained in all the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. p.254.
The Dinosaurs Rediscovered, MICHAEL J. BENTON, 2019.

Earth itself became toxic. When the asteroid struck, it vaporized layers of limestone, releasing into the atmosphere a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, ten billion tons of methane, and a billion tons of carbon monoxide; all three are powerful greenhouse gases. The impact also vaporized anhydrite rock, which blasted ten trillion tons of sulfur compounds aloft. The sulfur combined with water to form sulfuric acid, which then fell as an acid rain that may have been potent enough to strip the leaves from any surviving plants and to leach the nutrients from the soil.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

Then acid rain, formed from the nitrous oxide and sulfates clogging the atmosphere, began to hammer down on the surface, killing plants and animals and even dissolving rocks. This rain would have been as corrosive as battery acid and its most devastating effect would have been to destroy the shells of small marine organisms. p.165.
Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, John Pickrell, 2014.

The effects of the sulphuric acid on the climate was so severe that the computer simulations found it would have taken at least 30 years for the global climate to recover.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/dinosaurs-extinction-simulation

So just how would the birds have gone with all of this happening?

Bird: Canary. Very vulnerable to airborne poisons!

Canaries were used "in coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other toxic gases before they hurt humans". "Canaries, like other birds, are good early detectors of carbon monoxide because they're vulnerable to airborne poisons."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/

Birds are vulnerable to airborne poisons!!

Since birds are vulnerable to airborne poisons it is very clear that they should have gone completely extinct along with the dinosaurs when the meteor supposedly impacted our planet 66 million years ago. And this has been a very big headache for evolutionists with some admissions actually being printed:

Of the many great dinosaurian lineages, only the birds made it through the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous – but nobody is quite sure why. p.162.
Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, John Pickrell, 2014.

Early members of the palaeognath lineage survived (the group that includes ostriches and emus), as did members of the wildfowl and gamebird lineage, as did members of the lineage that led to seabirds, hawks, perching birds, and so on.
Why these bird groups survived when other dinosaur groups didn't is a good question, and one that hasn't been answered satisfactorily. p.208.
Dinosaurs: How they lived and evolved. Darren Naish & Paul M. Barrett, CSIRO Publishing, 2018.

Since the catastrophic scenarios of the meteor impact have been made public, and evolutionists now realise what this all means to the birds and other susceptible species, they have been running in backpedalling mode, trying to come up with all sorts of excuses as to how these susceptible species survived while the dinosaurs didn't. And it doesn't take much reasoning to see through it all.

The proposal given here is a result of one of their excuses:

Avians may have been* able to survive the extinction as a result of their abilities to dive, swim, or seek shelter in water and marshlands. Many species of avians can build burrows, or nest in tree holes, or termite nests, all of which provided shelter from the environmental effects at the K–Pg boundary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event
* Sorry but I just can't help myself--there's another "may have been"!!

Small mammals are given the same excuse:

K–Pg boundary mammalian species were generally small, comparable in size to rats; this small size would have helped them find shelter in protected environments. It is postulated that some early monotremes, marsupials, and placentals were semiaquatic or burrowing, as there are multiple mammalian lineages with such habits today. Any burrowing or semiaquatic mammal would have had additional protection from K–Pg boundary environmental stresses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event

It is difficult to understand just how much protection would be given by water and marshlands, tree-holes and termite nests, in the face of a destructive force up to an estimated energy of 21-921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs! And that followed by storms, tsunamis, cold and darkness, greenhouse warming, global fires and extensive acid rain bathing the earth for a long long time after the impact.

Being vulnerable to airborne poisons, the birds would have been one of the very first species to go extinct from the meteor impact, even before the non-avian dinosaurs. Still, just for a laugh we could consider the crazy excuse of survival by burrowing as this is mentioned and for the mammals which were supposedly "generally small, comparable in size to rats." And we are told that "Many species of avians can build burrows." Could this be an evolutionary throw-back to some ancestor that did a lot of burrowing? This extinction event would be the perfect time for it. And we would be led to believe that they were not just hiding in burrows for a few weeks:

The effects of the sulphuric acid on the climate was so severe that the computer simulations found it would have taken at least 30 years for the global climate to recover.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/dinosaurs-extinction-simulation

Burrowing Birds

So our burrowing birds would have been living underground for quite a few years! And as they got acclimatized to their new environment they may even have stayed there for decades, centuries, and even millenia! And we should of course expect evolution to kick in and make some adjustments:

Throughout the lives of the individuals, their genomes interact with their environments to cause variations in traits.
Natural selection acts on the phenotype, the characteristics of the organism which actually interact with the environment, ... Over time, this process can result in populations that specialise for particular ecological niches (microevolution) and may eventually result in speciation (the emergence of new species, macroevolution).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

So according to evolution, there is very strong support for some type of speciation for our avian-dinosaurs that supposedly survived the extinction in their new underground burrowing environment. Adaptability for this would bring about some animal that would possibly be a cross between our current day birds and moles. Further, this new species being at the very beginning of bird ancestry [above the K-Pg boundary] could well also be the common ancestor of our current day moles.

We could call this early ancestor to both species a Mole-Bird. And we can also see some evolutionary adaptations to dietary changes here:

Moles are known pests to human activities such as agriculture, lawncare, and gardening. However, they do not eat plant roots; they only cause damage indirectly, as they eat earthworms and other small invertebrates in the soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(animal)

But just think of the advantage the Mole-Bird would have had as it tunnelled up from underneath the worms and took them completely by surprise!

It is well known that many birds like worms. And the fact that our current day moles like eating worms suggest that this is a dietary throwback to their common Mole-Bird ancestor. Further it is well known that chooks spend a good part of their life scratching around the ground trying to dig up worms. But just think of the advantage the Mole-Bird would have had as it tunnelled up from underneath the worms and took them completely by surprise!

Mole Bird
Early Paleocene: 66-? Ma
Weight: 700 g
Length: 40 cm

Construction of what the Mole-Bird may have looked like

And we can hope that paleontologists can find some evidence of this animal somewhere above the K-Pg boundary. Unfortunately most of the paleontologists currently are probably searching for dinosaur fossils:

Somewhere around the world—from the deserts of Argentina to the frozen wastelands of Alaska—a new species of dinosaur is currently being found, on average, once a week. Let that sink in: a new dinosaur every ... single ... week. That's about fifty new species each year. p.6.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte, 2018.

By this they should be just about digging up dinosaur fossils left, right, and center. But hopefully there should still be a small number of paleontologists digging around above the K-Pg boundary somewhere trying to sort out the puzzle of the Early Paleocene dinosaurs whether they really did exist or not. And maybe just maybe they may stumble across our suggested Mole-Bird in the process.

And if they do find some evidence we could possiby see an amendment in the evolutionary tree as follows:

Suggested amendment for the Mole-Bird common ancestor of birds and moles

And it would be quite funny if they did actually find this creature. Well it certainly would support the premise that this is indeed all a hoax.

POSTSCRIPT

Note: though the majority of evolutionists have accepted the meteor extinction theory there are a few dissenting voices who have spoken out against it.

And given the devastation that supposedly occurred according to the meteor extinction computer simulations and that some species were very susceptible, such as the birds, frogs, and salamanders, I wholeheartedly concur with what one of the dissenting evolutionists has written:

"the survival of amphibians shows that this is simply a fantasy"

In fact there are many other species that were there with the dinosaurs that should have also been impacted and gone extinct. Simply put, because we still have these species around it would appear that the meteor extinction theory is a complete fantasy.

Some species that should be extinct!

Some species that should be extinct!

Some species that should be extinct!

But if the meteor extinction theory is a fantasy then so is the evidence for it. Unfortunately that includes fossils, rock layers, and even the smoking gun itself, the whole 150 km wide, 20 km deep Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico! And because we do currently have snakes, birds, frogs, salamanders, crocodiles, tortoises, turtles, and sharks [and probably quite a few other species that should not have survived], the supposed evidence is definitely a fantasy. But these "evidences" do exist and that is covered in another study.

REFERENCES

Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2020.