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What annoys you about paleontology?; Rant on about moronic theories, complaints, or just animals that annoy you.
Topic Started: Sep 28 2013, 05:04 PM (256,287 Views)
BossAggron
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Formerly Dilophoraptor

Incinerox
Oct 28 2014, 09:48 AM
Furka
Oct 28 2014, 06:32 AM
They keep dieing horrible deaths, I mean, geyser and meteorites.
... And single handedly conquering entire islands.

Posted Image
I can just imagine Pod going "Hell Yeah."
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CyborgIguana
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The fact that some people see the fact that we know little about how dinosaurs actually looked or behaved as a bad thing. I mean think about it...would paleontology really be as exciting or mysterious anymore if we knew this stuff for certain? It would basically take most if not all the imagination out of our perception of these animals.
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Furka
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That would be like saying fishing would be funny only if you catch what you want every time.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

In both cases, if it was yer actual profession, it WOULD BE more fun to have a 100% hit rate for interesting finds/good fish. Coz that's where the money is.

I agree with CI though. That said, it annoys me that we're only going by as little as 0.01% of the whole paleontological picture. Seriously, that's what we're working with. Life could still keep the shroud of mystery and at least give us more than that to work with.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

I wouldn't say it would be less fun, we know what modern animals look like and they are tons of fun
it would definitely be a blow to creativity however
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CyborgIguana
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The fact that we often take certain scientific hypotheses for granted as fact without properly examining all the evidence (not to the ridiculous extremes that SpookDoc claimed we do, but more minor things like Spoon-billed Deinocheirus, quadrupedal Spinosaurus, and quills on ceratopsians other than Psittacosaurus).
Edited by CyborgIguana, Nov 1 2014, 10:39 AM.
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Yi Qi
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CyborgIguana
Nov 1 2014, 10:39 AM
The fact that we often take certain scientific hypotheses for granted as fact without properly examining all the evidence (not to the ridiculous extremes that SpookDoc claimed we do, but more minor things like Spoon-billed Deinocheirus, quadrupedal Spinosaurus, and quills on ceratopsians other than Psittacosaurus).
Infact IIRC, i remember talking with DG about the quills of ceratopsians and we came across some pics of the triceratops mummified skin aswell as a chasmosaurus one and turns out the "quills" on those weren't likely like the quills of psitacosaurus but rather true spines, as in modified osteoderms

i believe john conway has a pic illustrating what i mean

Posted Image

so the quills on advanced ceratopsians wouldn't look like quills, at all they'd be full fledged spikes.


Now the others are a different case, we only had the upper jaw of deinocheirus so we had to assume it looked llike that, because thats what we do in paleontology or any kind of science really, we stick to the evidence we have untill more comes to prove our thesis wrong.

And the quadrupedal spino like it or not, is still the most likely interpretation of spinosaurus, scott harman's corrections were soon corrected by the authors of the paper aswell as many artists such as Marco Auditore and Mark Witton who ACTUALLY looked at the fossil and came with the same proportions, now, theres still the problem with the hands so untill we have the hands we can't confirm it for sure, but it sure leans towards it.

Now the thing i agree with you with is, don't ever take anything for granted in apleontology, this is a field of science theres absolutely no absolutes, just see how our idea of deinocheirus changed troughout the course of one year to see how drastic these changes can be. We know less than 0.01% about the life on the mesozoic, and we will never be able to settle anything for granted unless time travel is invented which i find very unlikely.

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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Yeah like, we have feathers on things. Or quills on some things, Or both on some other things. But when you actually look between species, the actual amount of certain integument varies eg.

* Yutyrannus was completely fluffy, but we know later tyrannosaurs to have had bald legs with rectangular scales and leather on some parts.
* Psittacosaurus is the only ceratopsian known to have tail quills, which were a totally different structure from trike's weird scales, which were again different from those of Chasmosaurus or Centrosaurus.
* Tianyulong had long quill like things with fluff, but Kulindadromeus had plated scales on its tail and varying types of fluff over its core, but not on its extremities.
* Carnotaurus had mosaics of scales arranged around rows of heavy scutes along its body.
* Sauropods had gecko like scales with some having narrow spines along their backs.

I could go on, but the point I'm addressing is that there is a HUGE variety in integument across dinosaurs.

But then you get those morons who, in light of all these quilled/feathered critters from China, scream out loud "FEDDER, ALL THE THINGS!" and proceed to put as much fl00f on as many things as possible, even when it doesn't make sense to, or even when it goes against what we actually have from the fossil record.

And that same logic (or lack of) extends to other things, people often leap to the more radical options when there's far more sensible options to go for, and it's why I tend to never take Andrea Cau's blog seriously (his logic on Dodoraptor Balaur was totally flawed and he eventually saw it and accepted, just like what will happen with his proposed solution to Spinosaurus's bipedal gait, among many things).

Oh, another thing that bugs me, and it's a lot simpler.

Paleontological news hype.

Seriously, when HK EVENTUALLY got the Spinosaurus finds in the paper, they actually declared it as "oceanic".

Or like how *EVERYTHING* has to be related to birds or T. rex SOMEHOW. Remember Siats? "HUGE PREDATOR STALKED AMERICA BEFORE T. REX". Or what about when they dig up a big theropod "T. REX COUSIN" when it's a goddamn carnosaur or megalosaur. Or how T. rex has become an official measurement "NEW T. REX SIZED DINOSAUR" etc. Or when ANYTHING involving integument has to be linked somehow to birds, even for the likes of Tianyulong, Kulindadromeus or Psittacosaurus, for which, any integument's just interesting in itself and has completely different structures and implications from say, Microraptor's fluff, which is ACTUALLY relevant to avian evolution.

For god's sake...
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

Oh... I never know before that we have evidence about Triceratops having such spikes...

Are there any paper or article about this?
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CyborgIguana
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I didn't say I had anything against any of the hypotheses I brought up, just that just because an idea makes sense and doesn't currently have any evidence against it doesn't necessarily mean it's certain to be correct.
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Yi Qi
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Mathius Tyra
Nov 1 2014, 11:47 AM
Oh... I never know before that we have evidence about Triceratops having such spikes...

Are there any paper or article about this?
Theres "nipple" like scales among the osteoderms , whcih likely were part of a larger spike.

There isn't any paper as of yet, but there are pictures, IIRC DG has showed me some.
Edited by Yi Qi, Nov 1 2014, 11:57 AM.
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DinoBear
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Incinerox
Nov 1 2014, 11:35 AM

* Yutyrannus was completely fluffy, but we know later tyrannosaurs to have had bald legs with rectangular scales and leather on some parts.
Got any links to those? Haven't seen those impressions yet.
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Similis
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Incinerox
Nov 1 2014, 11:35 AM
But then you get those morons who, in light of all these quilled/feathered critters from China, scream out loud "FEDDER, ALL THE THINGS!" and proceed to put as much fl00f on as many things as possible, even when it doesn't make sense to, or even when it goes against what we actually have from the fossil record.
But... FEDDERED SOROPODS? FEDDERED ABELISORS? Y NO FEDDERED ANKILOSRS?

Yeah, seriously, some of the "speculative" restorations are way too damn illogical. :P
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CyborgIguana
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Lizard fanboys and feather nazis, two extremist groups in the paleo-community that are equally irritating. :P
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

Austroraptor
Nov 1 2014, 11:54 AM
Mathius Tyra
Nov 1 2014, 11:47 AM
Oh... I never know before that we have evidence about Triceratops having such spikes...

Are there any paper or article about this?
Theres "nipple" like scales among the osteoderms , whcih likely were part of a larger spike.

There isn't any paper as of yet, but there are pictures, IIRC DG has showed me some.
Posted Image

Found it! This one, right? :P
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