Behold, a YEC response (quite well researched):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... lelinkedinAnd guess what - if you are a hardline young Earth creationist you should be doubting that this was actually a bird rather than a small dinosaur! Why? Because evolution of birds from dinos is a 'fairy tale for grownups', and because: "The real irony of this drama is that the Aurornis fossil doesn’t have any feathers, at least none that even the mass media is ready to exult over, in spite of the glorious plumage painted onto the artistic reconstruction that is making the rounds". All birds were of course created as fully formed feathered friends on day five of 'creation week'.
Though, having reached the end, the article is less dogmatic than I expected. "We don’t claim, on the basis of the material published so far, to know what kind of animal the Aurornis was". Hedging their bets, unlike with previous similar specimens (see footnote 2). And, who knows, perhaps it's a forgery?
"evolutionists, unable to produce actual transitional forms...". They (luckily for them) CAN eg Archaeopteryx itself - but it's not always where on the probable dinosaur-bird continuum a particular species, discovered as a fossil, was (Archaeopteryx being a case in point with its mix of features).
Footnote 2 does reveal how the YEC approach to this kind of scientific enquiry is an exercise in DENIAL and EVASION to protect a narrative and a worldview. Inflexibility in the face of new finds over time. Science can sometimes do flexibility. Fundamentalism almost NEVER can - it's too risky.
This article does not shift AiG's dogma-inspired position on any previous similar kind of fossil. Rather it adopts a 'new' (initial) policy for a 'new' fossil - "we're not convinced this was a bird though we're not going to categorically insist that it must have been a dinosaur instead".