Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

[Jodie]

So why did the Smithsonian post on their website that there were only about 6500 of these fossils? It's still not a tremendous amount.

 

[Dinwar]

So why did the Smithsonian post on their website that there were only about 6500 of these fossils? It's still not a tremendous amount.

Museum websites aren't usually run by the folks doing the research. Errors can crop up. They're a good source for information, but as with all sources for information caveat emptar. Plus, there are issues of how to calculate it--once you go back far enough, determining what's included and what isn't becomes somewhat problematic.

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http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils

From skeletons to teeth, early human fossils have been found of more than 6,000 individuals. With the rapid pace of new discoveries every year, this impressive sample means that even though some early human species are only represented by one or a few fossils, others are represented by thousands of fossils.

That is, the MINIMUM NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS is in the 6,000s. There can be FAR more fossils than that. There are a number of ways to establish minimum numbers in fossil and archaeological assemblages; for example, you can count all the left humerus bones you find. However, some people aren't burried with their left humerus (life was brutal in the pre-industrial eras, and sometimes you can only recover part of the person for burial; or, the bone happens to wear away by chance [The laws of taphonomy be a harsh mistress!]). The same assemblage can yield different minimal numbers depending on how you calculate it; numerous studies have been done on exactly that point, and my assumption is that the Smithsonian took the most conservative approach on this website. None of that says anything about the number of fossils, however. Humans have more than 200 bones, most of which can potentially be fossilized (the presence of sesimoid bones precludes giving exact numbers). That's 200 fossils per individual with a decent likelyhood of being preserved. And that's if the bones are complete; include fragmentary remains and the number climbs rather higher.

Plus, 6,500 individual fossils is more than ample for paleontological work. Last time you and I tangled you demonstrated that you have no clue how paleontologist work, and that you have this irrational notion that we must conform to the standards of medicine. We don't. The arguments made by the paleontologists and anthropologists researching these topics are there for you to analyze. When you do so--and I mean when you analyze the specific arguments--you can start to comment on the quality of the Hominin fossil record. Until then, you simply cannot know whether this record is sufficient or not. You can't know what you have no data to support.

Another quote you seem to have missed:

The debates are sometimes perceived as uncertainty about evolution, but that is far from the case. The debates concern the precise evolutionary relationships - essentially, ‘who is related to whom, and how.’

 

[Jodie]

Museum websites aren't usually run by the folks doing the research. Errors can crop up. They're a good source for information, but as with all sources for information caveat emptar. Plus, there are issues of how to calculate it--once you go back far enough, determining what's included and what isn't becomes somewhat problematic.

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http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils

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From skeletons to teeth, early human fossils have been found of more than 6,000 individuals.

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils

That is, the MINIMUM NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS is in the 6,000s. There can be FAR more fossils than that.

Should I call and ask or do you want to do it since your trust level seems to be at a MINIMUM.

There are a number of ways to establish minimum numbers in fossil and archaeological assemblages; for example, you can count all the left humerus bones you find. However, some people aren't burried with their left humerus (life was brutal in the pre-industrial eras, and sometimes you can only recover part of the person for burial; or, the bone happens to wear away by chance [The laws of taphonomy be a harsh mistress!]). The same assemblage can yield different minimal numbers depending on how you calculate it; numerous studies have been done on exactly that point, and my assumption is that the Smithsonian took the most conservative approach on this website. None of that says anything about the number of fossils, however. Humans have more than 200 bones, most of which can potentially be fossilized (the presence of sesimoid bones precludes giving exact numbers). That's 200 fossils per individual with a decent likelyhood of being preserved. And that's if the bones are complete; include fragmentary remains and the number climbs rather higher.

Plus, 6,500 individual fossils is more than ample for paleontological work. Last time you and I tangled you demonstrated that you have no clue how paleontologist work, and that you have this irrational notion that we must conform to the standards of medicine. We don't. The arguments made by the paleontologists and anthropologists researching these topics are there for you to analyze. When you do so--and I mean when you analyze the specific arguments--you can start to comment on the quality of the Hominin fossil record. Until then, you simply cannot know whether this record is sufficient or not. You can't know what you have no data to support.

Another quote you seem to have missed:

I don't think you have offered enough arguments to convince me that you are correct. When you do, I'll let you know.

 

[Dinwar]

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From skeletons to teeth, early human fossils have been found of more than 6,000 individuals.

Which is exactly what I quoted from the website. As I said, 6,000 individuals DOES NOT mean 6,000 fossils. Counting fossils in paleontology and anthropology isn't an exact thing; frankly, outside of crackpots and people with axes to grind, no one CARES. The interesting questions aren't "How many fossils are there?" but "How many individuals are there?", "How many bones vs. fragments are there?", etc., and to answer those questions different researchers use different methods (different field sites require different methods).

When we DO talk to each other about fossils, the term can have a few meanings. Often if the remains are articulated or essentially articulated (for example, a place where it's obviously one skeleton that got jumbled, as can happen with funeral practices; or, the skeleton remains partially articulated but bits of it have been removed) we consider that one fossil--but if you ask us how many bones there are, we'd tell you the number, usually broken down in one of several ways (by bone type, by transportation class, etc). If the remains are disarticulated, each bone is typically called a fossil. If the remains are fragmentary and have been put back together during preparation, the result is considered one fossil; if the remains aren't put back together, each is considered a fossil. So four different researchers can give you four different answers to the same question and all be right. But they never would, because that's not how we talk about these things. If I want to know the number of fragments, I ask for the number of fragments. If I want to know the number of bones, I ask for that. As you can no doubt see, asking "How many fossils do we have?" invites confusion in the field. And that's just body fossils. Add trace fossils to the mix and things get REALLY hairy, because now you've got the stratigraphers chiming in about how it's not a fossil, it's a sedimentary structure; and you've got to deal with questions like how much bioturbation is permissible before you can no longer call it a fossil. Easier to talk about specific things, and leave the general term out of such discussions.

Should I call and ask or do you want to do it since your trust level seems to be at a MINIMUM.

I wouldn't bother the Smithsonian with such a basic question. 6,000 is the minimum number of individuals. This is a standard bit of archaeological jargon. Plus, it'll be based on the minimum number of individuals at each site, meaning that we'd have to compile a list of methods, evaluate each method for each site, and figure out some way to compare them against each other. It's not worth the effort, to be blunt. The numbers we end up with (and it would be a range) are irrelevant to any research question.

Also, this has nothing to do with trust. The website does not say what you said it says. The website doesn't say there are 6,500 hominin fossils known. It says there are more than 6,000 individuals known. This is, as I have gone to some effort to explain, a very, very different question.

I don't think you have offered enough arguments to convince me that you are correct.

NOTHING convinces you that you are correct. You have made it clear that you consider your admited ignorance of my field to make you a better judge of the quality of work done in my field than I am, something that indicates a complete disconnect from rationality. I'm merely pointing out your false statements so that no one coming here to learn mistakenly concludes that you are right.

For anyone interested in the difference between the number of individuals and the number of bones, I can highly recommend The Archaeology of Human Bones. http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-Human-Bones-Simon-Mays/dp/0415480914 This book goes into detail about what you can learn from bone assemblages and how you learn it, including a chapter on how you figure out how many bodies you're dealing with, sampling issues, and a surprising number of other concerns applicable to anthropology and paleontology. The discussion of identifying the minimum number of individuals is a facinating one in terms of how we know what we know about historical sciences, the various factors that come into play, and the importance of good field methods to this type of work.

 

[Jodie]

Not that Wiki is the font of all knowledge but they say there are thousands, all of which are not directly related to hominids but are important to the lineage.

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

I think we also talked about that too Dinwar, as far where do you draw the line for what is or isn't a hominid. Wouldn't you think genetics would be important to make that determination if it were possible to do so with ancient bone?

 

[Dinwar]

I think we also talked about that too Dinwar, as far where do you draw the line for what is or isn't a hominid. Wouldn't you think genetics would be important to make that determination if it were possible to do so with ancient bone?

What we discussed was your absurd and baseless assertions that genetics is the ONLY way to do these analyses, that morphology was irrelevant (I'm sorry, "deeply flawed", despite the fact that you couldn't point to a single flaw in any specific study), and that you know more than experts because you've spent precisely no time learning the fields, the information, or even the bloody terminology.

Genetic CAN be useful. No one, least of all me, has ever denied that. However, there are serious limitations to those techniques as well. For starters, you have to have the genes--not always possible. And when you have genes from some of the taxa you're analyzing and not others, it's inappropriate to use genetic information; you essentially cut your dataset in half. Second, and what you seem to refuse to learn, is that genetics is always done on a subset of the genetic code. That subset is chosen using various criteria and the strengths and weaknesses have been debated at length, but you're still dealing with a subset--and the last time you trotted out these tired old arguments it was conclusively demonstrated that different choices lead to different trees. Almost every problem with morphology-based cladistics is present in genetics-based cladistics, plus a few unique ones.

Also, you are seriously mistaken about what the problem with drawing that line is. It's not a question of what information we have; if we had live specimens of every generation for the entire hominin lineage we'd STILL have debates about where to draw the line. The issue is that taxonomy is an attempt to put discrete boxes around essentially gradual systems. We can say the range within which the hominin lineage started, but precision is impossible because the data simply don't allow for it--not even in theory. In any other lineage this is essentially irrelevant; that range is below the threshold for perception in most lineages. Hominins are somewhat unique because we've got a tremendous fossil record for them, we've got tremendous interest, and we've got a fairly short period of time. REGARDLESS OF THE DATA YOU USE, these issues will still be present.

Not that Wiki is the font of all knowledge but they say there are thousands, all of which are not directly related to hominids but are important to the lineage.

No one has argued that point. I've pointed out the ignorance of equating minimum numbers of individuals with the number of fossils. You refuse to accept this basic bit of information.

That's just your opinion.

No, he's right. You're making extremely basic errors and refusing to accept correction; you're exhibiting all the signs of a crackpot.

Not that Wiki is the font of all knowledge....

It certainly explains a few of your errors. Wiki University is no substitute for serious study. I've provided at least one book that will correct many of the errors you are making. I'd highly recommend purchasing that book and reading it if you wish to continue discussing paleontology, paleoanthropology, and archaeology.

 

[Jodie]

No I'm not, whether it is 6500 or 70,000, that does not equate to the total human population. You do have species that look alike from a morphological standpoint that are genetically dissimilar, morphology isn't infallible. Why do I need to provide you with a study to back up that commonly known fact? I think it is your bias that causes you to get aggravated when I point these things out.

I can hear you now saying, " But I never said it was!" However, you are saying genetics isn't necessary and that relying on morphology alone is enough to correctly place the species. That's not a given.

 

[Drewbot]

Genetics isn't necessary to classify fossils.

A. Before there was DNA testing, fossils were classified.
B. Most Fossils don't have DNA available.

 

[Dinwar]

No I'm not,

You can say that all you want, but there is a record on discussion forums.

whether it is 6500 or 70,000, that does not equate to the total human population.

No one other than you has ever said it was, nor has anyone but you and Creationists ever said that we need the entire population in order to understand evolution.

You do have species that look alike from a morphological standpoint that are genetically dissimilar, morphology isn't infallible.

No kidding. Last time we danced this dance I provided three examples that you'd never even heard of--including at least one that works the other way 'round (organisms in the same species with very different morphologies). What you fail to understand is how morphological analysis works, and the limitations of genetic analysis. I explained how that works, and how we determined this information in the fossil record. You simply don't want to listen.

I think it is your bias that causes you to get aggravated when I point these things out.

No, it's your insufferably arrogant stance combined with your complete ignorance of the topic, willful refusal to learn even the most well-supported facts, and continuous misrepresentation of what I've said.

I also get annoyed at the projection. Last time you and I discussed these topics I provided a rather extensive discussion about the limitations of morphological analysis. You, on the other hand, discuss genetics as if it provided a perfect dataset. Leaving aside your refusal to listen to someone engaging in taxonomy from a genetic perspective, I have demonstrated that I do not have any of the flaws you insist on accusing me of--and you have demonstrated that you have every one of them.

I can hear you now saying, " But I never said it was!" However, you are saying genetics isn't necessary and that relying on morphology alone is enough to correctly place the species. That's not a given.

See? This is what I'm talking about when I say you misrepresent my arguments. I've never denied there are limitations to morphological analysis. No one on Earth understands these limitations better than paleontologists. You have no concept of how heartbreaking the limitations of our datasets are; I'd give my right eye (the one that works) to have genetic information about any one of the species we know only from fossils--as would any of my colleagues. However, all we have is morphology. Genetic information simply doesn't exist for these critters. It is impossible to obtain. Thus, we focus on what we CAN obtain--which is far, far, far more than you are willing to consider, much less accept.

Morphology provides useful data. A great deal of it. It demonstrably provides the same quality of cladogram as genetics--and I mean demonstrably, as in it has been demonstrated. To dismiss morphological analysis is simply irrational woo.

Here's a clue for determining whether your position is crackpottery or not: If you are criticizing a field, and all the evidence for your criticisms come from that field, while you can provide no new criticisms, you're engaging in crackpottery. Creationism is like this--every new bit of evidence any Creationist provides is found by geneticists, biochemists, paleontologists, and others studying evolution. Your argument is the same. Every single argument you have against morphology was discovered, analyzed, defined, and mitigated by the very people you're arguing are incompetent (don't give me any guff about how you never said that--it's inherent in your argument). We alreadly know all the flaws you keep bringing up. We know them better than you, and our analysis of them is the only reason you are even aware of them. We've also gone a lot further than you.

Genetics isn't necessary to classify fossils.

C. The existence of field markers shows that biologists accept that morphology is perfectly acceptable for identifying organisms even when genetic data IS available.

 

[barehl]

No I'm not, whether it is 6500 or 70,000, that does not equate to the total human population.

Nor would it ever need to. We're not really interested in the most extreme positions on the bell curve; we're concerned with the middle. And, you do get that with only a tiny sample fraction of the total population.

You do have species that look alike from a morphological standpoint that are genetically dissimilar, morphology isn't infallible.

I believe you are being dishonest with this statement. There are organisms that look superficially similar but are unrelated like the pronghorn and antelope or the musk ox and cattle. But, truthfully, in fine detail, morphology is vastly more accurate than it is wrong.

However, you are saying genetics isn't necessary and that relying on morphology alone is enough to correctly place the species. That's not a given.

That is not an absolute given but it is true the vast majority of the time. We aren't talking about something that is right only half the time or only 90% of the time or only 99% of the time. You would need to add a few more decimal points. So, statistically, morphology in detail is extremely accurate.

 

[kmortis]

This thread is closed for cleaning. Do not start this discussion elsewhere on the forum.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: kmortis

 

[kmortis]

Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would...

This thread is now reopened. Keep it to the topic, and the topic is not the other posters. I didn't hand out any infractions this time around, but any further skirting of the rules will be looked at more harshly. As always, keep it civil and on topic.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: kmortis

 

[jerrywayne]

The Daedalus "Sea Serpent"

Sightings are the primary reason for cryptozoology; in most cases, advocates for their favorite cryptids rely on eyewitness reports exclusively. How should skeptics respond to such reports? 1. By ignoring the eyewitness accounts (and requesting hard evidence?) 2. By dismissing the accounts as dishonest or delusional (because no real evidence is at hand, or the accounts are inherently implausible?) 3. By explaining selected accounts provisionally with reasonable explanations and without the “maybe monster” or cryptid in question?

I try to understand how cryptid sighting accounts arise in the first place. So option 1 (above) is of no value to me. Option 2 has some explanatory merit, but it is a reach in my opinion, too reductive in narrowing the phenomena to one or two causes. I prefer inductive reasoning, but without definitive solutions to individual eyewitness accounts (and we are without such solutions mostly), we are left with (plausible) speculation.

I offer the following account of a sea-serpent sighting made in 1848 that is still recalled and used to buttress a cryptological case for unknown marine animals. It is the famous HMS Daedalus sea-serpent.

http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/lost-tapes/creatures/sea-monsters-hms-daedalus-sea-serpent.htm

The late skeptic and science fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp, in his book The Fringe of the Unknown (1983), addressed the Daedalus case. He dismissed a hoax explanation (too many people involved) and rejected the idea that the shipmates were misidentifying a known animal (the “serpent” was not reducible to the features of known animals.) De Camp does offer the skeptics’ common sense, “in want of a specimen, mere testimony is never enough to establish the improbable, no matter how detailed the accounts or how respected the witnesses.” If we accepted testimony at face value in improbable cases, then we would have to accept the existence of a whole catalog of things “witnessed” but never proven.

De Camp does offer a plausible, if provisional, solution to the Daedalus sighting. He writes:


I have a theory -- a guess, a tentative surmise -- about this sighting. It may be right or wrong, and at this late date it cannot be proved one way or the other. But at least it seems to fit the facts more comfortably than some previous surmises.

This theory is that a couple of fishermen, out in their dugout canoe off the coast of West Africa or Brazil, rashly harpooned a whale shark, with their harpoon line belayed to the canoe. The harmless whale shark, the largest living fish, reaches a length of forty-five (some say sixty) feet and is fairly common in tropical waters. The harpoonee might have been some other large marine animal, but the whale shark seems the likeliest.

This particular shark, not seriously hurt but quite indignant, took off, towing the canoe like a chip behind it. Failing for some reason -- possibly simple panic -- to cut or untangle the line, the fishermen dove over the side and struck out for shore, leaving the shark to the derelict about the South Atlantic for weeks or months, until the harpoon head tore out or the line rotted and broke.

If you look squint-eyed at the picture drawn under Captain McQuhae’s direction for the Illustrated London News for October 28, 1848, you will see that the “serpent” does in fact look like such a canoe. The dark “back” of the monster is the shadowed interior of the vessel. The “head” is the flat place at the overhang of the bow, where the primitive fisherman rests one foot in casting his net or harpoon.

This theory accounts for the curious mode of progress of the serpent, in a straight line without visible wriggling. The ’mane” could be either seaweed that had grown on the derelict or water splashing about inside the half-filled boat as it labored through the swells, or both. Do I hear any objections?

My question is, does this kind of scenario advancing help in addressing sightings in cryptozoology?

 

[The Shrike]

^I guess there's a fine line between offering a plausible scenario to consider and special pleading. The more we can emphasize the former while avoiding the latter, the better.

 

[jerrywayne]

It is axiomatic that a mundane explanation is to be preferred over a more radical explanation. The problem is that cryptozoology seems to be a modern folk lore disguised as a zoological treatment. As such, it prefers the fabulous over the mundane.

Shrike, do you consider de Camp's explanation a case of special pleading?

 

[ScottV]

Not sure about de Camp's explanation but, as far as sea serpents go, google "The monstrous serpent was real!" for an interesting article. Sorry, I don't have enough posts to put in site links.

 

[Resume]

Not sure about de Camp's explanation but, as far as sea serpents go, google "The monstrous serpent was real!" for an interesting article. Sorry, I don't have enough posts to put in site links.

In what way do you find it interesting?

 

[Dinwar]

Sightings are the primary reason for cryptozoology; in most cases, advocates for their favorite cryptids rely on eyewitness reports exclusively. How should skeptics respond to such reports? 1. By ignoring the eyewitness accounts (and requesting hard evidence?) 2. By dismissing the accounts as dishonest or delusional (because no real evidence is at hand, or the accounts are inherently implausible?) 3. By explaining selected accounts provisionally with reasonable explanations and without the “maybe monster” or cryptid in question?

There is a fourth option you haven't considered: examining the data provided and determining if there is sufficient evidence to conclude anything. Often, there isn't. For example, a lot of bigfoot encounters are mere glimpses in a woods. Such sightings aren't sufficient to prove ANYTHING--not even that there was, in fact, a sighting (I've hunted a long time, and spend a lot of time in remote areas, so can attest to the ease with which your eye and mind can be fooled). At that point we're not saying that bigfoot doesn't exist--we are in fact saying that we aren't at that level yet. We are saying that there is insufficient evidence to make ANY claim.

The problem with concocting plausible-sounding scenarios by which these various sightings happen is that your explanation is just as fictional and erroneous as the woosters' explanations. Both of you are relying not on the evidence, but on preconceptions. BOTH of you are saying that you can say something without supporting evidence--which means, both of you are in error.

It is axiomatic that a mundane explanation is to be preferred over a more radical explanation.

I disagree (mostly because no one can provide a firm division between "mundane" and "radical" [or more commonly, "ordinary" vs "extraordinary"]). The issue here is that all the evidence supports is that someone had some experience. Even if we accept the facts of the eye-witness accounts there's often not enough to prove that they actually experienced anything more than the normal variations in human perception. We can't offer any explanation because in many cases we can't prove there's anything to explain.

 

[ScottV]

It gives a plausible explanation for sea serpent sightings by multiple people and I find that interesting. People are seeing something they cannot identify and filling in the gaps so to speak when the truth is more mundane. I also did not know that leatherbacks ranged that far north.

 

[William Parcher]

Multiple witness situations need to be treated specially. Each person must be examined individually. Nobody in the party should be allowed to speak for anyone other than themselves.