Paleontology, Politics, and Poo - A Thread for CSPAM

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

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

Flavius Aetass posted:

I remember reading that something as well-known as triceratops could have been just a juvenile chasmosaurus IIRC

I haven't been able to find any reference to that since reading it a few years back and if wikipedia is a guide to general consensus I'd say triceratops is definitely its own thing

i would imagine the real problems exist for species that are identified based on like two bone fragments or whatever

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

twoday posted:

Is it true that many of the species we thought were distinct are actually just one species at different phases of life?

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

quote:

And that the skull shapes of an individual could change a lot in the course of their life, or vary a lot between males and females? I remember reading that somewhere many years ago

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)

# ¿ Apr 1, 2020 15:39

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:34

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

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

Inshallah

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 06:01

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

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

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

paul_soccer12 posted:

Todd Bonezalez

of the

ShallNoiseUpon posted:

Bone Zone Bone Zone Bone Zone

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 23:31

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

Haeckel's Law <<< von Baer's Law

# ¿ Apr 8, 2020 23:32

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

Pitcher Witcher posted:

Do paleontologists get guns pointed at them by dingus landowners while working on a site like my archaeologist uncle does? Or is that just because he works in Idaho? Now that I think about it does that happen outside the u.s.?

yes and yes

# ¿ Apr 28, 2020 05:41

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Flavius Aetass posted:

I know that paleontologists and archaeologists are very delicate when excavating, but how do you avoid breaking anything in the shovel/pickaxe stage before you know what's there?

Have a basic idea of what you are digging in.

Thing is most dinosaur digs start with bones on the surface and folks dig around it. Still, some breakage is unavoidable. Preparation is controlled destruction.

# ¿ May 1, 2020 02:22

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

achillesforever6 posted:

A lot of skin impressions were lost because of careless excavation

https://twitter.com/TomHoltzPaleo/status/1258014564748349441

# ¿ May 6, 2020 23:04

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

achillesforever6 posted:

https://twitter.com/NHMU/status/1258811526472847361

I've seen some fossil marine reptile paddles where the bones were replaced by gem quality opal.

Wait here is a whole pliosaur: https://io9.gizmodo.com/eric-the-pliosaur-one-of-the-most-interesting-fossils-5987941

# ¿ May 9, 2020 05:13

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:34

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

Atrocious Joe posted:

am I crazy for thinking private collections should be illegal, or at least heavily regulated and permitted? not necessarily for common stuff like invertebrates or plants, but it seems wild for rich people to buy up dinosaur fossils which the wider scientific community may never know about.

In Canada this is mostly the case, that fossils are considered public heritage and must be kept in a public institution unless deemed not scientifically important (with some variation province to province) but in the US ultimately things found on private property are able to be sold. And most of, say, Texas, is privately owned.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2020 05:31

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