All dinosaurs are fakes.

Aepervius said:
"dinosaurs made of fake chicken bone"

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Tyrannosaurus_Rex_Holotype.jpg/250px-Tyrannosaurus_Rex_Holotype.jpg[/qimg]

pssst. Don't tell that chicken she is fat, she is only big boned. Also big teethed.
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Aaaaah! Tyrannosaurus chook!
 
Aepervius said:
"dinosaurs made of fake chicken bone"

pssst. Don't tell that chicken she is fat, she is only big boned. Also big teethed.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosauridae

I've butchered a LOT of chickens. Never seen one like that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nothronychus_BW2.jpg

Any chicken with claws like THAT that I see is going to be greated with a 12 gauge loaded with one of those fun little grenade things the military has!

http://palaeos.com/vertebrates/ornithischia/heterodontosauridae.html

Apparently chickens have fangs now.....Again, that one gets a shotgun-grenade in the face if I see it as a chicken.

....okay, I'll stop posting links to fun dinosaur pictures now....
 
Has anyone read Isaac Asimov's "A Statue for Father." Maybe dinosaurs are
delicious
large chickens after all
 
Aepervius said:
"dinosaurs made of fake chicken bone"

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Tyrannosaurus_Rex_Holotype.jpg/250px-Tyrannosaurus_Rex_Holotype.jpg[/qimg]

pssst. Don't tell that chicken she is fat, she is only big boned. Also big teethed.
Click to expand...

I believe the actual technical term is "big boneded." :D
 
Not only do dinosaurs exist, but they can also form together into a giant robot to fight evil space aliens.
 
Dinwar said:
I have tried doinig so. My conclusion is that it's not possible. A surprisng number of people here seem to think that merely posting a YouTube link is sufficient, despite the fact that many can't access them much of the time, that such videos often take a while to watch and are of dubious quality, etc. I don't get the mentality, nor the hostility that questioning that behavior excites in some people, but I've given up trying to have a rational discussion on that count.
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Thanks.
I can see that I will have to adopt your approach.
 
Dinwar said:
Hm. I'm disapointed they chose a sauropod--chickens ARE therapods, so that'd be my inclination. It'd teach kids how to use clues from the bones themselves to figure out life position--something that's surprisingly difficult at times.
Still, I can attest to the importance of such practices. Paleontology by necessity deals almost exclusively with bones, so learning how to prep, analyze, and mount bones is very important. It's something that every practicing paleontologist I've ever met engages in to some degree--even the invert guys collect modern shells and disect modern organisms.

If that's what the book actually shows, it'd be a very good addition to any budding scientist's library--certainly NOT Creationist nonsense.

I have tried doinig so. My conclusion is that it's not possible. A surprisng number of people here seem to think that merely posting a YouTube link is sufficient, despite the fact that many can't access them much of the time, that such videos often take a while to watch and are of dubious quality, etc. I don't get the mentality, nor the hostility that questioning that behavior excites in some people, but I've given up trying to have a rational discussion on that count.
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birds_and_dinosaurs.png


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Sure, T. rex is closer in height to Stegosaurus than a sparrow. But that doesn't tell you much 'Dinosaur Comics' author Ryan North is closer in height to certain dinosaurs than to the average human.
 
To be pedantic, there are three problems with that comic.

First, phylogenetic distanceis notoriously difficult to determine. It's generally not addressed in any detail. More typically, you discuss changes between the parent taxa and the daughter taxa of interest.

Second, technically speaking the down direction in that figure isn't time in phylogenies. In phylogenies, time isn't a factor. You CAN create phylogenies tied to time, but it requires the addition of stratigraphy and that makes its own nightmares. Stratigraphers and paleontologists get along about as well as hydrogen and oxygen--excite them at ALL and you get all kinds of fireworks! :D (Also, time is up in geology--older is [almost] always under younger. So it's really weird for me to see that figure--it's kinda like those maps where south is north.)

Third, while it's true birds are within the Dinosauria clade (and technically within the Therapoda clade), it's not unusual to call out individual clades in biology or paleontology. I mean, strictly speaking you and I are both fish. And amphibians. And reptiles. And therepsids. And so on. Depending on which model of early evolution you accept, we could also be bacteria or archea. Paraphyletic groups are considered okay in paleontology, because otherwise it becomes impossible to discuss anything--technically speaking, every daughter species is a member of its parent speceis, as each speciation event creates a new clade, and the old name refers to the whole clade not just the parent taxa, and that's obviously wrong. (For example, imagine wolves give rise to a new species, dogs. Technically, the term 'wolf" now refers to wolves AND dogs, and there's no term for the modern wolves anymore--we can discuss the whole clade, or just dogs, but we lost the capacity to just discuss wolves!)

Not that I don't appreciate the comic--I'm just feeling bored and pedantic today. :) Plus, it touches on some issues that I've been pondering for the past three years.
 
Dinwar said:
To be pedantic, there are three problems with that comic.

First, phylogenetic distanceis notoriously difficult to determine. It's generally not addressed in any detail. More typically, you discuss changes between the parent taxa and the daughter taxa of interest.

Second, technically speaking the down direction in that figure isn't time in phylogenies. In phylogenies, time isn't a factor. You CAN create phylogenies tied to time, but it requires the addition of stratigraphy and that makes its own nightmares. Stratigraphers and paleontologists get along about as well as hydrogen and oxygen--excite them at ALL and you get all kinds of fireworks! :D (Also, time is up in geology--older is [almost] always under younger. So it's really weird for me to see that figure--it's kinda like those maps where south is north.)

Third, while it's true birds are within the Dinosauria clade (and technically within the Therapoda clade), it's not unusual to call out individual clades in biology or paleontology. I mean, strictly speaking you and I are both fish. And amphibians. And reptiles. And therepsids. And so on. Depending on which model of early evolution you accept, we could also be bacteria or archea. Paraphyletic groups are considered okay in paleontology, because otherwise it becomes impossible to discuss anything--technically speaking, every daughter species is a member of its parent speceis, as each speciation event creates a new clade, and the old name refers to the whole clade not just the parent taxa, and that's obviously wrong. (For example, imagine wolves give rise to a new species, dogs. Technically, the term 'wolf" now refers to wolves AND dogs, and there's no term for the modern wolves anymore--we can discuss the whole clade, or just dogs, but we lost the capacity to just discuss wolves!)

Not that I don't appreciate the comic--I'm just feeling bored and pedantic today. :) Plus, it touches on some issues that I've been pondering for the past three years.
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Thanks for that - Would I be correct to think that notwithstanding your first point, it is reasonable to say that a T-rex is more closely related to a sparrow than to Stegasaurus, in the same way that lemurs are are more closely related to humans than to cats?

In the second point, I didn't think Randal was talking about phylogenetics any more, just the fact that there is less time between T-Rex and a sparrow than between T-Rex and a Stegosaurus.

But again - I thanks for your expertise.
 
Before watching that video, I had no idea Big Paleontology wielded so much political power.

Sorry, Big "Paleontology".
 
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