The Paleontology Thread

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Gomi: Ninja Monster
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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Shoopwoop17 wrote:
Gomi: Ninja Monster wrote:On that subject, poor scansoriopterygids. Something about the phrase "evolutionary dead-end" makes me involuntarily defensive, but I suppose until more evidence to the contrary comes to light then that's that. Gotta say though, I know they're just rough reconstructions for the math and I of course am not a scientist, but something about these Yi wing reconstructions always feel off to me. Something unnatural. Like if in the future some new discovery reveals that the real position of the styliform is totally different from these, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
While I haven't read the paper yet, the use of the term "dead-end" just feels like the authors are baiting rebuttal. Using terms like that strikes me as unprofessional, or "click-baity". But yeah, as you said, we'll see about evidence. The fact that they made this study so soon after we learned of the existence of this group... again, it feels like they are claiming too much.
But again, I havent read the paper, so I don't know what evidence they presented.
Neither have I, though I really should. That dead-end thing seems to just be from the Graphical Abstract they provided:
Image
Whereas in the summary they end with:
Our results show that Scansoriopterygidae are not models for the early evolution of bird flight, and their structurally distinct wings differed greatly from contemporaneous paravians, supporting multiple independent origins of flight. We propose that Scansoriopterygidae represents a unique but failed flight architecture of non-avialan theropods and that the evolutionary race to capture vertebrate aerial morphospace in the Middle to Late Jurassic was dynamic and complex.
That comes off much more professional.

Added in 5 minutes 6 seconds:
Actually, this reminds me of back when Microraptor was the hot new dino on the block, I remember there being aerodynamic tests made that had to be redone when they figured out the hindlegs couldn't stick all the way out to the sides like the arms.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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Gomi: Ninja Monster wrote:
Our results show that Scansoriopterygidae are not models for the early evolution of bird flight, and their structurally distinct wings differed greatly from contemporaneous paravians, supporting multiple independent origins of flight. We propose that Scansoriopterygidae represents a unique but failed flight architecture of non-avialan theropods and that the evolutionary race to capture vertebrate aerial morphospace in the Middle to Late Jurassic was dynamic and complex.
That comes off much more professional.
Very true! And good points in the whole post. I'm still not big on the use of "failed" as that implies that evolution has a direction, but that is just a minor thing.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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A recent study has divulged that Sue, everybody's favorite Tyrannosaurus, suffered from some particularly foul dental infections.

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https://www.livescience.com/sue-t-rex-t ... J9AQBiq7KA
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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I'm not sure which is the *best* thread for this question, so I'll go with this one. I came across these books at a secondhand bookstore. Despite the obvious advances in paleontology since their publication, would they still make for good reading?

Dinosaur Planet by Anne Mccaffrey
Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer
The Virgin and The Dinosaur by R. García y Robertson
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Gomi: Ninja Monster
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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H-Man wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:16 am I'm not sure which is the *best* thread for this question, so I'll go with this one. I came across these books at a secondhand bookstore. Despite the obvious advances in paleontology since their publication, would they still make for good reading?

Dinosaur Planet by Anne Mccaffrey
Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer
The Virgin and The Dinosaur by R. García y Robertson
Don't know about any of those, but I did find a website that seems to specialize in pulp fiction with dinosaurs, they have reviews on two of those.
https://prehistoricpulp.com/2017/08/03/ ... frey-1978/
https://prehistoricpulp.com/2017/08/04/ ... tson-1996/

Also wow, the amount of different covers Dinosaur Planet has gotten is nuts. Most of them make the paleontologist in me want to hurl, but this one is pretty badass:
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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The thought had come to my head not too long ago but I'm rather curious even if the asteroid never struck the earth, would non-avian dinosaurs still continued ruling today or was their fate eventually inevitable? I ask this because study for a few years now suggests prior to the asteroid impact, they were already on a decline.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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H-Man wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:16 am I'm not sure which is the *best* thread for this question, so I'll go with this one. I came across these books at a secondhand bookstore. Despite the obvious advances in paleontology since their publication, would they still make for good reading?

Dinosaur Planet by Anne Mccaffrey
Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer
The Virgin and The Dinosaur by R. García y Robertson
Dinosaur Planet also made a sequel by the same author, Dinosaur Planet Survivors. One company (I don't remember which one) also published them as a two-in-one book called The Mystery of Ireta. Yes, those two would make good reading, at least.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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Dinosaur Planet also made a sequel by the same author, Dinosaur Planet Survivors. One company (I don't remember which one) also published them as a two-in-one book called The Mystery of Ireta. Yes, those two would make good reading, at least.
Don't know about any of those, but I did find a website that seems to specialize in pulp fiction with dinosaurs, they have reviews on two of those.
Thanks, Mikelcho and Gomi!
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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GodzillaFan1990's wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:37 am The thought had come to my head not too long ago but I'm rather curious even if the asteroid never struck the earth, would non-avian dinosaurs still continued ruling today or was their fate eventually inevitable? I ask this because study for a few years now suggests prior to the asteroid impact, they were already on a decline.
It's hard to say if they'd still be ruling, given all the climate shifts of the last 65 million years, but I'm sure some would still be kicking around. Who knows what they'd be like by now, though, and what other life forms would even be competing with them. Mammals certainly would've gone in very different directions than what ultimately happened.

As for the decline thing, weren't they at a high level of diversity at the end of the Cretaceous? And a lot of different families were doing well for themselves, with well known lineages like tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and ankylosaurs getting steadily bigger and more advanced.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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The decline thing hasn't been agreed on since WWD was the height of accurate dinosaurs. It's pretty clear the dinosaurs were fine.

I feel they would have thrived on no asteroid, maybe more birds and mammals would appear and compete but not totally take over the niches
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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JAGzilla wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 8:15 pm
GodzillaFan1990's wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:37 am The thought had come to my head not too long ago but I'm rather curious even if the asteroid never struck the earth, would non-avian dinosaurs still continued ruling today or was their fate eventually inevitable? I ask this because study for a few years now suggests prior to the asteroid impact, they were already on a decline.
As for the decline thing, weren't they at a high level of diversity at the end of the Cretaceous? And a lot of different families were doing well for themselves, with well known lineages like tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and ankylosaurs getting steadily bigger and more advanced.
Actually diversity was not great at the end Cretaceous, from what we can tell. Hell Creek is kind of the textbook example. It only has one ceratopsian and one tyrannosaur, where slightly older formations preserve tons of ceratopsians and multiple tyrannosaurs. If the asteroid hadn't hit, dinosaurs probably would have recovered. They had their own extinction events before the end-Cretaceous. But given that they were already going through an extinction event, the asteroid really didnt do them any favors.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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This just in: We've got the very first known definitive hadrosaur from Africa. It has been named Ajnabia odysseus and, judging from its material, was a lambeosaurine related to European genera like Arenysaurus. The genus was unearthed in the Ouled Abdoun Basin of Morocco, and lived alongside the abelisaur Chenanisaurus and an unnamed titanosaur.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7120303657

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This new paper examines in detail how osteomyelitis affected Tyrannosaurus rex

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75731-0

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A new Triassic lizard, Kopidosaurus perplexus, has been named after re-examining a skull that had been sitting in storage in 1971.

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A detailed glimpse at the endocranial anatomy of the primitive sauropodomorph Buriolestes

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joa.13350

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You guys gotta follow Thomas Holtz on Facebook and Twitter. He always has the current paleonews, fresh from the oven ;)
Last edited by Dino-Mario on Wed Nov 04, 2020 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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Image

The skull of an albanerpetontid preserved in amber has given scientists clues on how their tongues worked.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 4.facebook

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Giant dormice roughly around the size of cats used to roam Sicily.

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https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/202 ... 20Islands.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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https://phys.org/news/2020-11-duckbill- ... hints.html

Proof that dinosaurs swam across oceans like how salties and American crocs do.
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Gomi: Ninja Monster
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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GodzillaFan1990's wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:44 am https://phys.org/news/2020-11-duckbill- ... hints.html

Proof that dinosaurs swam across oceans like how salties and American crocs do.
Well, more like proof hadrosaurs were present in several places surrounded by water at the time and probable that oceanic travel was the reason, but I get ya.
I do find a certain irony in the mental image of a lambeosaurine paddling its way out to sea, it's like those early swamp-dwelling reconstructions were right all along, just with the wrong kind of water.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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In awe at the size of this lass. Absolute unit.



See SUE in the 'Flesh' at The Field Museum
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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tbeasley wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 12:48 pm In awe at the size of this lass. Absolute unit.



See SUE in the 'Flesh' at The Field Museum
I know, I got that in my recommendations a couple days ago too. Utterly gorgeous, if this thing goes on tour(which it sounds like it might be doing) I NEED to make it to whatever the closest museum it visits is.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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And the cursed paleoreconstruction of the day is...

Image
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Now that I have your attention, let's move onto the paleonews of today:

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Kataigidodon, a new cynodont genus, has been named from lower jaw remains uncovered in the Chinle Formation. May very well be the true identity of the cynodonts from WWD (identified as Thrinaxodon in the supplementary material.)
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/ka ... 09022.html

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A 2-million-year-old skull of Paranthropus robustus strongly suggests that it was climate change that impulsed the development of rapid changes and not sex as previously thought.
http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/a ... 09035.html

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Kylinxia zhangi, a five-eyed cambrian arthropod from China that can be best summarized as the outcome of Anomalocaris and Opabinia doing a Fusion Dance.
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/ky ... 09025.html

Close re-examination of fossil material from the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge and the Booth Museum at Brighton which was previously identified as a shark fin and fish jaws has revealed that the remains actually belong to a pterosaur which could be a potential new species.
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/az ... 09040.html

Archaeological excavations at the site of Wilamaya Patjxa in the high Peruvian Andes have revealed a 9,000-year-old female burial associated with a big-game hunting toolkit. Yup, women in hunter-gatherer societies tackled big prey.
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/ear ... 09029.html
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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That "Oviraptor" looks like a freaking Eborsisk.
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Re: The Paleontology Thread

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H-Man wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:53 am
Dinosaur Planet also made a sequel by the same author, Dinosaur Planet Survivors. One company (I don't remember which one) also published them as a two-in-one book called The Mystery of Ireta. Yes, those two would make good reading, at least.
Don't know about any of those, but I did find a website that seems to specialize in pulp fiction with dinosaurs, they have reviews on two of those.
Thanks, Mikelcho and Gomi!
You're welcome!

There's also a sci-fi trilogy of novels you might want to consider. It's the West of Eden trilogy written by Harry Harrison, best known as the author of Make Room! Make Room!, the novel that was the basis for the film Soylent Green. The novels in the trilogy are:

*West of Eden,
*Winter in Eden,
*Return to Eden.

Speaking of the Ireta duology by Anne McCaffrey, I had read in a paperback encyclopedia of sci-fi (again, I don't remember which one; all I know is that it had a mostly gray cover) that this series was also going to be a trilogy, but that obviously never happened.

Is Anne McCaffrey dead? I seem to remember hearing that she was. If that's so, then the third Ireta novel (if it even exists, that is) will likely never be published.

I also recommend a paperback short story anthology (there were three editors; I don't remember two of the names offhand, however, but I think one of them was Martin H. Greenberg, who seemed to have a hand in editing every anthology of that type back in the day) called The Science-Fictional Dinosaur.
Last edited by mikelcho on Thu Nov 12, 2020 3:45 pm, edited 13 times in total.
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