Paleontology, Politics, and Poo - A Thread for CSPAM

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Paleontology, Politics, and Poo - A Thread for CSPAM

«‹›4 »

Flavius Aetass: Mar 30, 2011

my daughter's apatosaurus:

taylor swift's apatosaurus:

# ? Apr 1, 2020 17:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 29, 2024 16:54

Slim Jim Pickens: Jan 16, 2012

Daikloktos posted:

Were dinosaurs taxonomically birds, or were they the lizard ancestors of birds

Depending on how broad your taxonomic definitions are, birds are dinosaurs, or fish.

# ? Apr 1, 2020 20:55

Lightning Knight: Feb 24, 2012; Pray for Answer

Flavius Aetass posted:

my daughter's apatosaurus:

taylor swift's apatosaurus:

what, and I cannot stress this enough, the gently caress

# ? Apr 1, 2020 21:09

animist: Aug 28, 2018

Lightning Knight posted:

what, and I cannot stress this enough, the gently caress

# ? Apr 1, 2020 23:32

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

Bilirubin posted:

Torosaurus not Chasmosaurus. Most folks would agree with Triceratops being its own thing but its an interesting argument.

Its not super common but yes (trilobites, "branchiosaurs" are two that come to mind).

A little less so but variation is a problem when working with incomplete data such as the fossil record. Also a problem is what we call "cryptic species" among living animals, that only differ genetically. You would never tell that from fossils.

(I'm also a paleontologist, and I know of a few others at various stages of their careers on the forums)

is it possible to mistake paleontologists at diff stages of their careers, as members of distinct professions??

# ? Apr 1, 2020 23:55

Flavius Aetass: Mar 30, 2011

Squizzle posted:

is it possible to mistake paleontologists at diff stages of their careers, as members of distinct professions??

Yeah most of them appear to the layman as a grant writer

# ? Apr 2, 2020 00:26

TheDon01: Mar 8, 2009

Flavius Aetass posted:

my daughter's apatosaurus:

taylor swift's apatosaurus:

Whats the reasoning behind this beast

# ? Apr 2, 2020 00:44

Gum: Mar 9, 2008; _{oho, a rapist

time to try this puppy out}

Flavius Aetass posted:

my daughter's apatosaurus:

taylor swift's apatosaurus:

I always felt like the world was missing a dinosaur with a head like a partially flayed cock

# ? Apr 2, 2020 00:55

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Lightning Knight posted:

what, and I cannot stress this enough, the gently caress

Have you been spared that tweet lol

# ? Apr 2, 2020 01:51

Trumps Baby Hands: Mar 27, 2016; Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

I think it looks frightening when it�s cut off. It�s a Doberman�let it have its ears!

# ? Apr 2, 2020 01:59

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Flavius Aetass posted:

Yeah most of them appear to the layman as a grant writer

lol

Here you go, paleontologist love poop and vomit: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/03/fossilized-vomit-and-feces-are-delighting-paleontologists/

# ? Apr 2, 2020 02:35

fanfic insert: Nov 4, 2009

Gum posted:

While most depictions of humans show them with a thin layer of fur, recent discovery of human fossils at extreme latitudes suggest that humans actually had much thicker coats than other primates

They're going to think we were bloblike creatures based on fossils of Americans after Yellowstone erupts aren't they?

# ? Apr 6, 2020 05:56

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Inshallah

# ? Apr 6, 2020 06:01

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

TheDon01 posted:

Whats the reasoning behind this beast

I think it's operating on elephant logic. Big "ears" = heat regulation.

# ? Apr 6, 2020 06:58

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

its all a hoax imo op

# ? Apr 6, 2020 10:24

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

stephen jay gould ftw punctuated equilibrium ftw

# ? Apr 6, 2020 10:25

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

actually im a pale epistemologist

# ? Apr 6, 2020 10:43

thewoof: Sep 11, 2006; My eyes are the eyes
of a dead man.
I feel the unholy stream.

Has anyone else seen that old movie Jurassic Park?

# ? Apr 6, 2020 14:16

Drunkboxer: Jun 30, 2007

exmarx posted:

stephen jay gould ftw punctuated equilibrium ftw

Someone gave me a collection of his essays when I was a kid and I loving love it dearly but I have no idea who it was. gotta wonder why they decided a 9 year old would want a collection of essays about evolution and poo poo but it worked out

edit: to be clear I didn�t read it when I was nine, it sat on my shelf for years then when I finally decided to read it it blew my mind

Drunkboxer has issued a correction as of 15:52 on Apr 6, 2020

# ? Apr 6, 2020 15:49

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

Squizzle posted:

actually im a pale epistemologist

Ugh, this thread is WAY too highbrow. What it needs is some really bad and stupid attempts at paleontology by morons.
Let us journey into a magical portal to the world of David Peters, paleoartist, amateur paleontologist, and lord high captain supreme of Dunningkrugerland. The most insane things have been highlighted for your pleasure.

Darren Naish posted:

Stage 1. Starting in 1995, Dave began publishing arguments and hypotheses in the technical literature. He started with a brief letter in Nature (Peters 1995) where he suggested that previous authors (Unwin & Bakhurina 1994) had erred in their interpretation of a particular pterosaur�s wing membranes (that particular pterosaur was Sordes pilosus, a small, long-tailed form from Kazakhstan). What happened in that 1995 article set the course for everything that was to follow: Dave looked at published photos of the pterosaur concerned, thought he could see something that the original authors (and everyone else who�d looked at the actual fossil) had missed, and based his whole argument on the re-imagining of an image (Peters 1995). In their response to Dave�s article, Unwin & Bakhurina (1995) noted that �Peters�� reconstruction� is based on a highly unreliable technique, interpretation of photographs� (p. 316).

Darren Naish posted:

Stage 3. The Longisquama holotype consists of the front half of the animal, preserved on a slab of matrix. It seems that the adjacent chunks of matrix are known, but they�ve rarely been figured in the literature. By using a special photo-tracing technique [read on] on both the front half of the specimen, and on the additional segments of matrix, Dave claimed some time round about 2003 that he (and everyone else) had previously understated the weirdness of Longisquama. He claimed to find the whole back end of the animal � the hips, the hindlimbs, the tail, and a whole bunch of additional, giant appendages. And hitherto-overlooked baby specimens of Longisquama were preserved on the slabs as well.
[...]
Dave had now crossed the line from producing remarkable-but-just-about-plausible results to freakin�-crazy-almost-certainly-not-real results. Longisquama-like dorsal frills, claimed Dave, were present in pterosaurs. Yes, in ALL pterosaurs. Short-tailed pterosaurs were not actually short-tailed: they actually, said Dave, have long, whip-like tails, often with tassels at the ends. Furthermore, toothless pterosaurs actually have teeth after all, wing-fingers still have claws at their tips, and digit V is still present in the pterosaur hand, says Dave. Some pterosaurs have two nostrils, says Dave (as in, two on each side). Dewlaps, enormous dorsal crests and even anglerfish-like �lures� decorate the heads, snouts and throats of Dave�s pterosaurs. Some of these structures, says Dave, are about as big as the animal�s head and body combined. �Best� of all, pterosaurs of many kinds are � says Dave � preserved with babies attached to, or adjacent to, their bodies. These babies are, says Dave, built like miniature adults (that is, they have adult-like proportions), decorated with the same grandiose flaps, frills and dewlaps as Dave�s adults, AND they have wholly unossified skeletons, hence explaining their feint, translucent, near-invisible essence on the slab. I�m not joking about any of this stuff: it�s all documented online, and also in Peters (2004).

Darren Naish posted:

[...]What I�m getting at here is that people who come along and properly instigate paradigm shifts or convincingly overturn long-held models are exceptional, and either incredibly gifted, incredibly lucky, incredibly hard-working, or incredibly rich� or some or all of the above.

David Peters would have us believe that just about the whole �mainstream�, accepted structure of the tetrapod tree is wrong, and that he � uniquely � has discovered a wholly new, paradigm-busting one.

Darren Naish posted:

[...]In additional to this phylogenetic re-shuffling, and in addition to those many new details of anatomy that he claims he�s discovered (more on that in a moment), Dave also thinks that he�s discovered some crucial new stuff about the biology and behaviour of pterosaurs and other fossil tetrapods. Using the digital tracing technique, he claims to have discovered flightless pterosaurs, vampiric pterosaurs that bit dinosaurs, widespread evidence of super-narrow wing membranes, and even prey items (like insects) preserved within the mouths of some animals. Pterosaurs have generally been assumed to be egg-layers, an inference based mostly on their hypothesised position among archosaurs. Recent finds of baby pterosaurs preserved within eggs (Chiappe et al. 2004, Ji et al. 2004, Wang & Zhou 2004), and of an egg preserved right next to the pelvis of a particular pterosaur specimen (L� et al. 2011), provide compelling support for that assumption.

But Dave�s claim that numerous unossified baby pterosaurs are preserved alongside � or on or even in � the bodies of adult specimens is discordant with this, since their 'presence' led Dave to argue that pterosaurs were viviparous. After the first baby pterosaur preserved inside an eggshell was discovered, Dave seriously proposed that it represented a miniature kind of pterosaur � he named it Avgodectes pseudembryon � that took to hiding inside broken eggshells (he published that name in the magazine Prehistoric Times).

Darren Naish posted:

Dave thinks that a number of small pterosaur specimens � interpreted by everyone else as juveniles of Pterodactylus and other taxa � are actually miniature adults. His interpretations are dependent on his digital tracing technique, and on the incorporation of the characters he finds via digital tracing into his phylogenetic analyses. Given that he interprets these tiny animals as adults, and given that he contends that growth in pterosaurs was isometric, he proposes that the babies of these miniature pterosaurs were less than 10 mm long. Yes, less than 10 mm long.

This is an awfully long list of heresies to come from one researcher. Is it impossible that Dave Peters really is the most insightful, most gifted, most brilliant compiler and analyser of phylogenetic data of our time? No, it is not impossible. Is it likely?

Darren Naish posted:

[...]Dave is a bit of a contradiction on this front. He�s thrown a million radically strange new discoveries out there at a phenomenally rapid pace, and indeed the rate at which his �discoveries� occur is unprecedented. Dave proclaims frequently that he changes his ideas when he�s wrong, and indeed he invites others to test his claims. So far so good. But, when others don�t see what he sees, when they criticise his interpretations and his methods, he remains steadfast in his opinion that they�re wrong because they�re biased, because they�re refusing to use the same method that he does (read on), or because they can�t provide a superior hypothesis.

What about the alternative � that they�re not wrong? I�ve now corresponded with Dave on several occasions about the structures he reports to find. He seems very confident that he�s always right, yet I don�t think that he ever is. I am not alone; many others have challenged Dave�s observations in discussion (virtually all of this is online, though see Bennett 2005), and indeed Dave�s work is ignored by publishing scientists.[...]

For more david peters, simply google 'david peters pterosaurs' for articles outlining why he's insane, (and sometimes him leaving plaintive comments on other people's papers asking why his incredibly important research hasn't been used as their foundation). Often he will show up in the comments to personally explain how incredibly unowned he is, and also that btw he's being 'blackwashed' by Big Paleo. You can also find him on his blog, the pterosaur heresies, where he daily outlines his many important phylogenetic discoveries, each of which overturns decades if not centuries of work by blinkered and ignorant fools, like that toothed and baleen whales descend from completely separate groups of mammals and toothed whales specifically evolved from tenrecs.

Alternatively, if you'd like to see crazy people with too much time on their hands that don't bother with even faux-humility, you can look up John V. Jackson, aka 'strangetruther', who randomly erupts across the internet whenever someone dares contradict his completely sane and absolutely accurate self-published science, with coherent arguments like

John V. Jackson posted:

Yeah... only I covered this in my book published 4 years ago: "The Secret Dinobird Story". I notice my name doesn't appear in this blog page so you've managed to find a reason to airbrush the person who has made the greatest contribution to the understanding of Drepanosaurs.

I wonder if you can even be bothered to make an excuse for this blatant transgression. Don't give me that crap about peer review. You've shown that you disapprove of publishing anomalies yourself, when it suits you. In fact peer review is only there so that people can stick their noses up in the air and hide behind their poncy cravats when they can't do the science as well as others but want to pretend they can.

THIS DREPANOSAUR ISSUE HAS BEEN SOLVED. It wasn't by you and it never will have been.

You'll regret this.

John V. Jackson posted:

Silvio may have mentioned gliding for drepanosaurs in 2010 but I'd already covered the idea pretty expansively on either the vertpaleo list or the palaeo list over five years earlier, both of which Silvio subscribed and posted to, and, on the one I'm referring to, actually on the subject of drepanosaurs and at the time of my posting.

Anyway, he doesn't seem himself to believe in gliding for drepanosaurs other than Hypuronector, so he can't claim credit for understanding Megalancosaurus.

Palaeontology again revealed as an area seen to be not a science but a minor decoration on flawed social activity by groupists with pretences but no expertise in technical or difficult but vital abstract areas. Time I got on to Portsmouth University's funding procedures.

John Jackson.
http://sciencepolice2010.wordpress.com

Yes, that is the name of his website. It really is.

# ? Apr 6, 2020 16:50

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Squizzle posted:

actually im a pale epistemologist

Ontology Trump's epistemology

Lol auto correct going to leave it though

# ? Apr 6, 2020 18:47

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Drakyn posted:

Ugh, this thread is WAY too highbrow. What it needs is some really bad and stupid attempts at paleontology by morons.
Let us journey into a magical portal to the world of David Peters, paleoartist, amateur paleontologist, and lord high captain supreme of Dunningkrugerland. The most insane things have been highlighted for your pleasure.

For more david peters, simply google 'david peters pterosaurs' for articles outlining why he's insane, (and sometimes him leaving plaintive comments on other people's papers asking why his incredibly important research hasn't been used as their foundation). Often he will show up in the comments to personally explain how incredibly unowned he is, and also that btw he's being 'blackwashed' by Big Paleo. You can also find him on his blog, the pterosaur heresies, where he daily outlines his many important phylogenetic discoveries, each of which overturns decades if not centuries of work by blinkered and ignorant fools, like that toothed and baleen whales descend from completely separate groups of mammals and toothed whales specifically evolved from tenrecs.

Alternatively, if you'd like to see crazy people with too much time on their hands that don't bother with even faux-humility, you can look up John V. Jackson, aka 'strangetruther', who randomly erupts across the internet whenever someone dares contradict his completely sane and absolutely accurate self-published science, with coherent arguments like

Yes, that is the name of his website. It really is.

Oh God what are you doing you will summon him that way

# ? Apr 6, 2020 18:48

Drakyn: Dec 26, 2012

Bilirubin posted:

Oh God what are you doing you will summon him that way

Incoming new blogpost: 'confirmed: koalas are arboreal pandas and moles are highly specialized forms of tuatara, also i am being paleontologically BLACKWASHED by the elitist hivemind of something awful dot com who are just frightened of REAL SCIENCE.'

# ? Apr 6, 2020 18:58

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

It's cool how people used to use the model of a crocodile for drawing what dinosaurs might have looked like, and gave them minimal excess facial flesh or lips. See the old t-rex illustrations with exposed teeth and such. Now more modern illustrations are like, actually they had poofy feathers and migght have had weird prehensile trunks or mobile lips or more chubby faces. We can't tell because the fossil record makes it hard to know!

Here's what some mammals would look like if we used that model to try to see what they looked like from skeletons:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals

Dinosaurs probably had wattles and flappy bits and poo poo

# ? Apr 6, 2020 19:55

paul_soccer12: Jan 5, 2020; by Fluffdaddy

Bones

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:37

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

paul_soccer12 posted:

Bones

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:42

Amp: Sep 10, 2010

Bone Zone Bone Zone Bone Zone

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:44

paul_soccer12: Jan 5, 2020; by Fluffdaddy

Todd Bonezalez

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:47

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

paul_soccer12 posted:

Todd Bonezalez

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:48

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

paul_soccer12

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:48

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

No wait uhh..

paul_

uh

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:49

TODD BONZALEZ: Jul 3, 2010

pauleontology_soccer12

# ? Apr 6, 2020 21:49

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

# ? Apr 6, 2020 22:13

Impkins Patootie: Apr 20, 2017

# ? Apr 6, 2020 23:17

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

TODD BONZALEZ posted:

It's cool how people used to use the model of a crocodile for drawing what dinosaurs might have looked like, and gave them minimal excess facial flesh or lips. See the old t-rex illustrations with exposed teeth and such. Now more modern illustrations are like, actually they had poofy feathers and migght have had weird prehensile trunks or mobile lips or more chubby faces. We can't tell because the fossil record makes it hard to know!

Here's what some mammals would look like if we used that model to try to see what they looked like from skeletons:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals

Dinosaurs probably had wattles and flappy bits and poo poo

Then there was the one graduate student that was very artistically inclined that made a life sized sculpture of a new theropod he was naming and planning to splash in the press that, like you said, was showing all of the bones with a thin drape of skin covering it. When I saw it I said "if you brought that to a veterinarian they would euthanize it on the spot".

It was a nice sculpture of a seriously anorexic dinosaur though.

# ? Apr 6, 2020 23:30